Neon Genesis:Immortals
by Rick Spiff
Summary: An NGE / FF7 / DBZ crossover epic of martial arts action and... many other things. Must be read to be believed.
1. Death from Above!

"That's it; time to go to work." - Gendo Ikari.

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Neon Genesis:Immortals

Episode 0:1

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Opening Act: Death from Above!

Disclaimer: Characters contained herein are not property of the author, hence this work is non-profit. All rights reserved by Squaresoft, Viz Video, Gainix, ADVision, and all other respective copyright holders of Final Fantasy VII, DragonBallZ, and Neon Genesis:Evangelion.

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[June 20th, 2015.]

It was a normal spring day in Japan. The air was relentlessly humid, a weak breeze offering a mild reprieve from the stifiling heat once associated only with the summer months in the Pacific Rim. Since Second Impact, the seasons had become little more than fancy names to remind people of a time only just recently passed.

The sun was perched in its lordly position high in the brilliant azure sky. A handful of white clouds scurried across the heavens as a pack of animals lost in the Sahara desert--many scalded into place by the hot, unforgiving sunlight.

The oceans had risen far in that disaster of more than a decade ago. What was once nearly considered mountain territory had been farmed to feed the survivors on this volcanic island. At one such farm, one of a hundred green fields dotting Japan's innumerable foothills, laid upon land that resisted farming as the fires of Hell resisted snow, a man was bent to work over his tractor.

He was a short fire plug of a man, with arms like cargo cranes and stout legs that held his torso up like a beer keg set upon a pair of saw-horses. His arched back was covered in the cloth of a worn blue T-shirt, the neck skin above his collar tinged a deep red from many days like this spent under the driving whip of the sun and the relentless march of the new seasons.

The man stood back from the open engine bay of the tractor, pulling back his dirt-covered hands and absently wiping them on his worn trousers. He looked to the sky with a weathered sigh, black eyes peaking out from under the brim of an ancient Giants baseball cap. He had lived in this area most of his life; his father making a living at a small factory nearby that used to make plastic parts for toys he had never seen in his life. The factory was now a bare spot in the ground, and this once rock-hard ground bore crops every year. Like father, like son, he worked his body to the bone every day of the year, now merely tied to a different profession.

And yet, nothing was the same. Not after that day fifteen years ago, when the modern worlds had been turned on its head. The land had seemed to swell in anticipation as the seasons stretched, shrunk, and blurred into one another. The world was changing around him, and although he felt that he might never catch up, that suited him just fine. After all, not all change was good.

The air moved around him again, drawing some of his sweat away. Spring had just begun, when the rains fell every day like spears sent from the heavens to murder his crops, and the heat was like a vicious animal, calling none its ally. He watched the clouds for a second longer, knowing that a little moisture would make his work easier and perhaps his equipment wouldn't break down quite so often, but he didn't really believe it was so. The rains would hold out for one day while he was stuck working on his tractor, and the ground would harden and the work would be back-breaking.

And once again, nothing would change.

He bent back to his work. Silence followed the short-lived breeze like a cat stalking its prey.

For a moment all was well with the world, the farmer left to the elements, sharing a comfortable moment of silence as the one shared by very old friends.

However, the silence did not stop as silence normally did. It did not leave the eternal chirps of cicadas. It did not leave the sounds of grass swaying in the nonexistent breeze. It spread across the field, then across the hills themselves like a living thing, choking off the sounds of nature.

The farmer's hands paused in their work.

A flock of birds broke from the nearest grove of trees, scattering into the sky, desparate to escape something only they felt coming. The evergreens swayed from the force of their departure, the gnarled limbs moving up and down slowly.

Shortly, they were followed by a matching flock from the next hill. Yet another flock came alive, even further away, and the next, and the next, until the sky was flecked with the beating black wings of thousands of birds.

Then the screaming began.

The first call was a scream of pure, soul-rending fear. It had no voice; it had every voice. What it lacked in the black bird's usual complexity of notes it more than made up for with raw emotion. Emotion backed by a primal meaning that the farmer could understand as plainly as human speech. No, understand was not the right word; it was more as if he _felt_ it, at gut level.

The sound played at the mind, like a cat cornering a mouse, trapping it, focusing its nameless message deeper and deeper into the subcon- scious, where it pulled at the emotions of generations past, back to a time when man feared everything around him and death was a single misstep away.

And with that understanding, the call leapt from one beak to next, like ripples from a stone tossed into a still pond. In seconds, every bird in the sky was screaming that same unearthly scream of terror. Fear tainted with the frenzied promise of pure violence; horror colored by the need to fight for their survival, all over a back drop of heart- stopping fear.

The farmer was frozen in place, one hand still wrapped around the steel side of his blue tractor as the cry suddenly rose in volume from ten thousand birds in perfect unison. He suddenly doubled over as if a giant, unseen hand had punched him in thef stomach. His eyes, once a clear and gentle brown, turned a sickening red. His body stayed in a bent-over position, held frightfully still for one second. Then, as if being manipulated by a skilled puppeteer, he was shaken suddenly, his body jerking like he had grabbed onto a high-voltage wire. A third and final convulsion struck with so much force that it threw him clean off of his feet.

The body landed smoothly on its feet and righted itself, hands hanging loosely at its sides; open, ready. Ignoring the screams from overhead, it looked up to spy the birds, this time heedless of the sun's blistering glare. The new face held not a hint of malace or displeasure; the sun striking its features was ignored, treated as if it never was. Its gaze was calm, impassive, and utterly, utterly devoid of life.

A calloused hand was raised to the air, fingers extended like spears, and the birds were cut from flight as a single animal. The flock changed shape suddenly, as if it were a whole entity, writhing in pain, just before it lost shape altogether and fell to the earth like so many rain drops.

They plummeted to the ground all at once, falling in a cloud, raining down around--but not directly upon--him. Each tiny, fragile body was death before it hit the group with a wet crunching noise, a sound overlayed upon itself thousands of times.

The flood of dead animals rose almost the man's knees.

Then came the grin. Like the impossibly blank gaze it framed, this grin was not something human, not a facial expression any human could make. The grin completed the thing's face--an understated visage of pure malice, as if violence itself had been handed the paint brushes for a self-portrait.

Lastly, it turned to face the nearest urban center, staring into the distance as if it see the city it seeked through hills and trees.

The city called Tokyo-3.

------

The breeze which blew through the foothills north of Tokyo-3 was normally a pleasant respite from the rising temperatures of the spring season. Today was no different, though it was harsher, more insistent, like a child desperately wishing to tell a secret that it alone knew. It played a lonely symphony in the hills, bounding through deep forests and empty fields. The many farms in its path, the great open spaces, where trees were traded for edible plants, and the many roads that connected them--evidence of human inhabitants--only added to its terrifying tone.

Almost fifty kilometers from the furthest out-lying district of Tokyo-3, in the hills west of Japan's fortress-city, sat a modest Shinto shrine. Over a hundred meters through tangling underbrush and up a flight of stairs that would make Olympic athletes pale, it did not invite casual visitors. The only road in the area was in excellent repair, a lane of durable asphalt wide enough for a tank to drive down comfortably, though certainly a tank would make for an odd sight this far outside of the city.

The only visible item of interest was an ordinary phone booth set off the side of the road. Painted a sickly green color that marked it as public telephone, it was the only sign of modern life which could be seen from below the shrine.

A young Shinto temple maiden stood before the phone booth, perfectly still. Her head was cocked to one side as if listening for a train whistle in the distance.

What she heard was nothing.

Not a single living thing made a sound. Not the birds. Not the ever- present cicadas... nothing. The wind swam through the tree limbs, it's lone cacophony all around her, plying at her senses as if reaching from the trees with ethereal fingers.

The girl who stood alone and listened to this nothingness looked to be on the younger side of fourteen. She had the pale complexion of an albino, and hair that gleamed--almost glowing--blue in the early afternoon light. That hair was bound into a long pony tail that hung nearly to her waist, and she wore the thick traditional robes of a Shinto priestess. Beneath the loose bangs that hung over her forehead, a pair of crimson eyes peered out at the world, precisely scrutinizing every feature and detail that came to their attention. However, those eyes now looked frozen in place, as if the girl had just witnessed some extraordinary horror and those blood-red orbs, ringed with white, could not get her mind to acknowledge what they had seen.

The wind pulled at her robes, tugging at the heavy material in that brisk, spring-breeze sort of way. To most, it would bring to mind lunches in the outdoors and children playing in the grass without a care in the world. But this breeze did not bring fond memories to the young girl who listened to its tone, its depth. She felt as if her heart might stop in place, the wind covered in something filthy and evil, as if she should take gather it up and burn it as one would a set of clothes covered in the blood of an innocent human being.

Finally, she leveled her head, a look of disbelief slowly growing on her pale face. She walked to the phone booth with a determined stride, pulling the door open with much more force than necessary, and ripping the receiver from its hook as if it might run away. She commenced a vicious pounding on the device, dialing a long number from memory.

For an unbearably long time, she listened to the phone on the other end ring, until the other end picked up, and a short conversation took place.

"It's Rei. I felt it... no, just a few minutes ago. Even the birds have stopped chirping! They know it's coming! ... of course. I'll be there soon.... Well, can't you send a helicopter or something? Uh-huh. Yeah. Yes, I understand.... Who? Never met him; don't know him.... Damn." But the voice at the other end was gone.

"Damn!" Rei swore.

She hung up the phone with a delicate huff and continued to look through the dusty glass panes to the ouside world. The phone booth was new. Very new. Wasn't more than a year old, in fact, installed by the government. Installed here, just for her.

*Just for me.* She thought to herself. *They put me up here, complete with a temple and a trainer... and for what? I'm fifty kilometers from the city, for crying out loud! Spread out their forces. Right, who gave them that idea?*

Another gust of wind picked up, the light dimming suddenly as a cloud passed over the sun. She stopped laughing and looked aimlessly into the sky, a single thought echoing in her mind.

*Time to go.*

She stepped out of the booth, a single sweat-drop drawing a line down the side of her face. It was here; it was close. She could feel it, but all she could tell was that it was in the direction of the city, and it intended to kill people.

*It wants to kill.* Rei thought to herself. *Well, not on my watch.*

She bolted for the stairs, taking the 100+ meter uphill sprint like it was second nature to her. She did this run ten times every day, and it showed. She moved with a fluid grace that few athletes could hope to match, covering the distance from the base of the hill to the temple in just under fifteen seconds.

Had any sporting scout saw this, Rei would have earned herself an instant ticket to fame and fortune before she reached the top step. However, jaws would have been bouncing off of the stone walkway if these same scouts remained to see her leap the eight meter tall entry arch in a single bound... without so much as breaking her stride.

------

Elsewhere on the continent of Japan, other curious feats of physical ability were being demonstrated to the wilderness.

Consider Goku Son.

Already known the world over as one of the best martial artists on Earth, Goku had spent most of his life studying the art. Scratch that. He _had_ spent all of his life studying the art. His abilities should not be very surprising, but it was Goku Son, and a small company of close friends, that had developed martial arts techniques that were magic to the rest of the world.

To some, the group were demons with powers granted by the darkness. To others, they were the heroes of this planet, granted supernatural powers at birth. To Goku, none of the talk and rumor about his life really mattered. He did what he wanted to do, raised a family that he loved, and practiced the art... all that was good enough for him. Being different was often a heavy burden to live with, but Goku didn't mind; he was a man full of heart and he cared about those he defended: Even his generosity to his opponents was legendary.

Right now, however, he had no time to concentrate on his fond memories, or even to consider the bad ones. He was quite occupied flying through the air at an incredible speed, heading towards Tokyo-3.

Flying without an external means of propulsion.

One of the many techniques Goku and company had mastered was the ability to focus ki--the body's energy--in a way such that one could soar about the skies as a plane can, or hover in place like one could walk upon air. Despite its recreational possibilities--few in number, since it took great skill an a considerable amount of ki to do it--flying was most useful as a rapid means of transportation, a means of getting somewhere fast.

At the moment, Goku was very, very interesting in getting somewhere fast, for the same force which was winding its way into the mind of a certain young albino girl was also alarming his senses. If it was as powerful as he felt, then haste was most definitely needed. So, he raced toward the great city of Japan, the pride of the country, with a sinking feeling in his heart. Would he make it in time? Would he be fast enough to save the people in its path?

Would he?

His senses called again, drawing him from his brief revere.

He looked down, to the right. Hundreds of feet blow him, he could see a darkened circle, like a bruise on the earth, a dot of black ink surrounded by light green and dark brown fields that ran together into the horizon like a patchwork quilt. After a few seconds of looking at the spot on the ground, Goku dropped a few hundred feet quickly, intent on getting a better look as he passed overhead.

He was still a hundred meters distant when he felt a sudden chill, like a hand of ice wrapping its frosty fingers around his still-beating heart. He stopped far short of the farm, hovering in place. Shock played over his tanned features, drawing a pale mask over weathered skin, as he took in the scene before him.

Dead birds. Hundreds of dead birds. Thousands of dead birds. Thousands upon thousands of little dead black birds.

*So many birds dead? In such a small space? What could have possibly caused this?!* Goku wondered in a fright. It was... unnatural; terrifyingly so. He paused like a cobra sniffing the air for its prey.

A lone sound answered him; only the cold, unfeeling wind, clawing at his clothing with phantom fingers. Something was wrong here, something was seriously, deadly wrong. Something far more sinister than he had first suspected was now at work... and he knew exactly where it was headed.

Steeling himself, Goku fell the rest of the distance, flexing his ki at the very end of his fall to come nearly to a stop. His booted feet touched the ground in near-silence. Here the wind cut through the trees like a banshee, but Goku was not detoured by the frightening sound. He made his way towards the field slowly, on foot, often turning left and right to observe his flanks. His dairokan was listening quietly. There was life here... he could feel it. It wasn't much--only a few small insects and some burrowing animals--but there wasn't a single living bird within his range of sense. There were no people nearby either, and something else was tickling his senses.

The taste of fear.

The city south of him still burned with human life, flickering and pulsing with fear like a tiny campfire in the distance. He broke out of the dense woods into the clearing. He stopped far short of the circle of dead bodies that littered the area, however, choosing to remain back in the shadows of the huge trees that stood around the tiny valley. They stood shoulder to shoulder, like ancient sentinels, with Goku standing low amongst them, as a small child surrounded by his elders.

After a minute of just looking, Goku reached into the small pouch hanging from his belt, and extracted a compact electronic device, not unlike a modern cellular phone in size and function. It featured only five large buttons, all pressed in red plastic to contrast against the black metal frame of the device.

He looked at the kanji engraved into the metal for a moment; words he had read a thousand times before made new again, as fear suddenly robbed him of such memories. He pressed the one labeled 'science,' and brought the phone to his ear, listening to ringing on the other end, counting under his breath.

"Five... six... seven... Come on, Ritsuko-san, pick up the phone!"

And in the moment of his complaint, she did, "Moshi moshi?"

"Doctor?" He said, quickly.

"Hai," She snapped off. He was about to announce who was calling when he remembered that this particular device identified him, in advance, to anyone he called with it. Goku wasn't much for technology, but this was simple to use, and the perfect tool for contacting someone like Ritsuko, who didn't share his extraordinary abilities or peculiar communication preferences.

"Something bad has happened here, Ritsuko-san."

"Goku, listen carefully. We're on alert status here. Since you're in the area, can you come to Tokyo-3 straight away. And keep to the west."

Goku's skin suddenly felt prickly all over. "It's no longer here." He said, barely breathing the words out. Ritsuko heard him clearly though, without the sounds of the wilderness to mix with his soft, deep voice.

"What? What's no longer there?"

"The Angel." Goku said. "The Thing. Its coming right at Tokyo-3." He had never seen an Angel of this sort before. No one had. The first Angel ever known to exist had killed everyone that laid eyes on it; not even photographs remained. But Goku, he remembered. He remembered it more clearly than any other event in his life. The sounds of a soul screaming, screaming at all of humanity. The pain there, the rage that ripped through his consciousness as he heard its death-scream in his mind. He still had no idea what sort of creature this Angel was, but he knew what it would do.

At the first opportunity it had, it would start killing people. And it wouldn't stop until it had killed everyone, wiped the planet clean of them, much like--

*Stop, Goku! STOP!* He shook himself, his mental discipline reasserting itself. He calmed down enough to speak again after a few seconds.

"It was right here." He continued. "It killed black birds, lots of them, right in this field." His voice wavered a bit at the end, and he gestured helplessly at the corpses piled before him, as if he could show Ritsuko over the phone.

"There's a bunch of birds corpses where you're standing?" Ritsuko said, replacing his words with the objective, clinical terms the doctor loved so.

"The Angel killed them. I know it." He said flatly, his throat suddenly dry.

"But no human bodies? Just birds?" Ritsuko probed.

"Just birds." Goku finished. He set the phone on the ground, leaving it on so NERV could come out and investigate what he had seen by chance. Perhaps they would explain away this under a mountain of circumstantial evidence. Perhaps they would have an easy-to-swallow explanation, worded in their scientific language, stripped of the feeling that was all too real to Goku, but little more than pointless details to them.

But he too, could not find many words to describe what he had truly seen in that field. All he could say for certain was that whatever had done that was unlike anything he had faced before, and whatever it was, he could not treat it lightly.

He left the ground in a flash of light and took to the skies, his leap lengthening impossibly into full flight. In seconds he was back to his original heading, flying straight for Tokyo-3. Behind him, a tiny voice came from the tiny cell-phone laying on the ground, calling out, unheard, to his receding form.

"Goku? Are you still there? ... Goku?! Goookuuu!!!"

------

The sounds of slow, even breathing consumed the room.

In. Out. In. Out.

The room was spartan, and catered well to small nuance-like sounds, such as breathing. It was a modest space built for sleeping, and perhaps a little reading. Boxed in by four wooden walls, a high ceiling and a window to the south. A polished wood floor added a touch of luster to the otherwise drab space. Furnishings were limited to a tatami mat and a small wooden chest.

Rei was kneeling before the wooden chest, looking at the item sitting on top of it. A tanto. Her eyes beheld the sight without emotion for a moment, then narrowed slightly. The surface of the chest, dark from wood stain and smoothed by a lacquer finish, gleamed in the dull sunlight streaming through the room's open window, the reflected rays meeting her eyes harshly.

She had changed out of her robes and into a pair of black shorts that looked like they had been painted onto her skin, her chest covered by a halter top that allowed for a good viewing of her cleavage and left a large section of her lower torso uncovered.

The knife held her vision for a moment, then her hand came down and picked it up, her fingers cradling the weapon delicately. Looking it over with a critical eye, she took in the mirror-polished blade and its razor-sharp edge. Then she gripped its handle tightly in her right hand, and took up her loose pony-tail in her left.

There comes a time, in every person's life, when they are given the opportunity to cast aside everything familiar and journey down a new path, where they can see the world differently.

The people who go, all go for different reasons.

The blade's sharpness was never in doubt to Rei, but she still breathed a sigh of relief when it easily cut her hair without catching on a single strand. Setting the knife aside, she opened the chest and removed a pair of shears from the top drawer. Working from memory, she made quick work evening out the cut, so as to make it more presentable.

Though she had no mirror, leaving even the tanto sitting on the chest, she took a moment to regard herself.

*A warrior? ... Perhaps.*

*A priest? ... Of sorts.*

*A woman? ... To the core.*

The path now laid before her did not allow for the possibility of return, but she did feel she had to look back, even now, when the past was so close. She had people to protect, a world to save, and an Angel to kill. _This_, the new person she had become, was the future.

Placing the shears in their storage space, along side a ball of twine, a roll of tape, some nails and bevy of other useful trinkets, she looked back to the tanto. The sheath was quickly placed over the blade, and the knife was properly put away but a moment later.

Taking to her feet, Rei walked to the far end of the room, her feet gliding across the bare floor soundlessly, only the light rustle of cloth left indicating her passing.

The closet contained a small but mostly normal, contemporary wardrobe next to a few martial arts gi, and but two pairs of shoes in the bottom. From the top shelf, Rei retrieved a canvas traveling bag, and soon had it full. Four changes of clothes, two outfits for exercising, a picture, a postcard, and some sundry items all went into the carry-all, which she zipped closed in a deft bit of motion. Standing, she looked about the room in a full circle, taking in every corner of the room where she had lived most of her life.

"Good bye." She said quietly, and walked away, leaving the door open behind her.

Down the stairs, Rei found herself at the ground floor of what she had called home for pretty much her entire life. Anything that came before her arrival at the shrine was a blank slate in her mind. This was the only home she had ever known, and she was about to leave it, permanently.

"Sensei!" She called out, her voice ringing clear in the quiet woods.

"Hai," Came the expected response. "Leaving so soon?" Rei didn't bother looking about for the source of the voice, she just stepped aside the rapid series of attacks that came from behind her immediately after the words.

The man who came at her, obviously an experienced fighter, was dressed in temple robes similar to the clothes Rei had been wearing only a few minutes ago. His brown hair was cut extremely short, not unlike a Marine's high-and-tight and his brown eyes seemed to sparkle. Even as he attacked, he smiled at Rei, his movements swift and sure despite his years. Compared to Rei, he looked like an old man, although one's best guest to his age would put him in his late forties.

Her teacher for eleven years, Sensei Miyamoto, had made it his personal mission to keep Rei on her guard ever since she came into his care. These little attacks were the only formal greetings they had given each other in many years. Her reflexes, well-trained in this exercise, allowed her to easily dodge a continuous flow of attacks that would overwhelm all but a handful of expert martial artists.

As she moved backward, parrying Miyamoto's strikes, her feet scarcely seeming to touch the ground in white slippers, she bid her Sensei farewell. "Yes, it is time for me to go fight. I can feel it... like a storm on the horizon."

"Ah-ha." He said, throwing a few spinning kicks into his pattern of attack and grinning widely as the girl moved around the blows like water flowing over rocks. "Something you feel in your dairokan, ne? Something you can't put words to, but know right to your core."

"That's about what it is, Sensei." Rei replied, her voice only a little bit uncertain.

Miyamoto stopped at the same instant Rei did, their moves and intentions choreographed with infinite precision over the many years they trained and lived together. His fist was only an inch from her face, but Rei didn't blink, merely smiling slightly as he pulled back his hand, opened it, and peered at the lines in his palm as if divining the future.

"I'll try to visit, Sensei, I promise." Rei bowed to him, a movement she had not made in years.

"Yes, well..." The teacher said absently, dropping his hands to his sides loosely and returning the bow. "Good luck, Rei-san."

"Thank you, Miyamoto-san." Rei said, a light blush shading her cheeks as her eyes turned to examine the ground. "Good bye,"

"Good bye," He replied.

With that and a tiny wave, Rei bounded back over the open gates and tore down the stone steps she had practically worn out over the years. Miyamoto stood without moving for several moments after she left, after she reached the road and ran past the far bend, even long after she had left the valley, looking into the distant horizon in the direction of Tokyo-3. He could feel it as well, the fortress city was about to get a very unpleasant visitor dropped off at it's doorstep. As he turned his head to look at the mountains to the North, the sun revealed a patch of scar tissue beginning at the base of his neck, which seemed to extend well below the collar of his robes. It was an old scar, worn with time, and only a few people remembered how he got it.

But Miyamoto remembered. He remembered very well. Hashi Miyamoto remembered everything, and soon, that photographic memory would come in handy.

"Good luck indeed, Rei-san," He said to the mountains, a grim smile on his weather-beaten face, "You'll need all that you can get."

------

He cut the sky like a knife, leaving a scar of glowing white over soft blue. The buildings far below seemed to gaze up at him as he passed. They were spread sparsely throughout the city, with its wide roads and extremely wide sidewalks, but slowly growing larger and appearing more and more densely packed. The clouds in the sky were few, but on the distant horizon, visible only to someone at his altitude, a storm was coming.

It would not take long in getting here.

Goku turned his attention from the dark edge of the sky to the green land below, watching as the brown stripes of roads and grey dots of concrete bunkers passed below. Here, only the wind spoke to him, whistling through his clothing, roaring in his ears--not an entirely unpleasant experience, all in all. Goku didn't care much for city life, with the car horns and people packed practically shoulder-to-shoulder (though, truth be told, Tokyo-3 was quite a roomy city for being in Japan), the big machinery that made the concrete jungle work smoothly could keep him from sleep even when the weather wasn't a humid and damp mess that made his sheets a tangling prison.

Still, he had promised the doctor he would stay here if he was needed, provide them with support if necessary, and generally stay out of their way if all else went well.

After what seemed like an eternity of flying in no particular direction, Goku finally spotted the landmark he had been looking for: a green sign with a strange symbol that was meant to be a helicopter, right above the number seven.

He landed quickly, briefly thankful that he would have something to keep him distracted. It was time to find Ritsuko-san and tell her in detail about what he was sensing. The enemy... it was on it's way.

He walked past a man wearing a NERV Internal Security uniform, barely noticing the olive-drab color just as he passed by. The tall warrior thought about saluting for an instant, but since he wasn't in the military, he was worried it might be taken as an insult. Besides, he didn't know how to salute anyhow.

------

In the shadows, Gendo Ikari scratched his chin thoughtfully. This was not a day he'd looked forward to. There was, yes, a sense of relief now that the moment had arrived; and they could stop worrying about things that _could_ go wrong and focusing on doing their best to make things go right.

Of course, this _was_ the moment, and now that they were here, they couldn't afford any mistakes, especially with no time to fix them.

Fuyutsuki spoke, his voice low and gravelly. "This does not bode well."

The other man stopped the scratching motion and dropped his hand to the desktop. "My son is adequately trained, if that will assuage your worries, Fuyutsuki."

Ikari turned to look at his one-time mentor and long-time friend. Fuyutsuki was a lanky man, and carried himself in such a way that had he been the one saddled with poor vision, he would be called a nerd. It was, Ikari mused, something the man would not feel bad about either. He carried himself well and his manners were excellent, but his bookish behavior and often pale looks left one wondering just who he worked for. In a primarily military organization such as NERV, Fuyutsuki would surely fit in better in the science department, as opposed to the command staff.

Gendo Ikari, however, would have none of that, and a man like Gendo Ikari was not easily refused. The older man's wisdom and experience could be counted on in any situation they might encounter. A mind not dulled by his years studying ancient tomes and rotting texts was a massive storehouse of useful knowledge, especially given what they were facing.

Besides, the man's utterly atypical behavior was refreshing in a place were saying 'sir' was a way of life and one needed magnetic keycards and DNA scans just to get into work every day.

"We can only hope he can tap the power before we're all horribly killed."

And his sense of humor, thought Ikari. An insufferable smirk appeared on the Commander's face. "Why is everyone suddenly so depressed around here?" He asked out loud.

As only he and Fuyutsuki occupied the small office Gendo called his own, the answer came from a rather predictable source. "Probably just looking death in the eye, old friend."

Ikari chuckled, his mellow voice slightly scratchy and echoing within the confines of the office. "Yes. Probably. But we _must_ win, you know."

"Yes, I know we must. If we don't defeat the Angels..." Fuyutsuki trailed off.

Ikari tilted his head, his dark hair hanging over his glasses, which glinted in the room's low lighting. "Exactly. It is for that reason NERV exists."

The phone rang. Ikari's hand was on the receiver in a flash. A second ring sounded before he picked up though, raising the phone slowly to his ear. "Yes? ... I understand.... No, we are ready.... Thank you, sir."

He dropped the phone receiver into it's cradle with a loud clatter.

"That's it; time to go to work."

And for the first time that day, Commander Ikari grinned.

------

The military base Goku had passed less than an hour ago was under attack.

He knew nothing of this, as he had used one of the many trams that ran through NERV's underground installation to get to the core of the complex, near the science area.

"It's comin' right for us!" Screamed Sergeant Hiroshi Takona. His squad, dressed in combat fatigues, wasted no time jumping to their assigned tasks. In a matter of seconds, three members of his squad had pulled out a portable machine gun, and the remainder of his men had entrenched themselves behind some cover. He was right behind them, pulling out his pistol and firing at the approaching object, giving the machine gun crew time to set up a more formidable weapon.

They had nothing to do but hold it off, as the other JSDF forces had been alerted and would be here in a matter of minutes. Still, being in command of the first military unit to engage a confirmed Angel, Takona was not feeling optimistic about their chances of survival. Maybe it was the way the Angel seemed to glow a deathly red as it hovered above the ground like a UFO from all those old Science Fiction movies he watched as a young man. Perhaps it was the way it seemed to look at them through its lifeless, pale eyes. Its eyes looked like nothing else he had ever seen, and he didn't care to look at them ever again.

Then again, perhaps it was the way is casually raised one emaciated limb and flexed its extra-long fingers, causing the machine gun crew to simply explode in a shower of entrails and fresh blood.

Perhaps.

It was then Sergeant Takona realized someone was screaming

A second later, he realized that someone was him.

------

Shinji Ikari was not having a good day.

The sun was shining, a light breeze was camped out in the city, keeping the noon temperature from climbing too high; in short, a beautiful day.

He was walking down a street near the heart of Tokyo-3, a well-used canvas bag slung over one shoulder, his feet taking him aimlessly about the city. Shinji wasn't a very tall boy, maybe five foot four, with a slim build. His black hair was long and unkept, hanging loosely over his dark brown eyes. Shinji hadn't been to the city since he was a very small child, but he still found it disturbing that nothing here looked familiar; if he had seen this city before, it had simply changed too much to be recognized.

Then there was the sound of distant combat. The deep sputter of machine gun fire, the echoing roar of jet hover craft, the distant thunder of mortar shells and exploding missiles. If it were night time, he would have been able to easily spot the area of combat with the flashes from both sides lighting up the sky. But this far away, the sounds of battle echoed off of the buildings and the noises seemed to come from every direction at once.

*Great, I come all this way and nearly walk into the middle of a war. What's going on over there?*

The boy lifted one hand to shield face from the harsh sunlight and looked up, searching for anything suspicious on the mountains that lay past the enormous concrete buildings that reached to the sky. For a moment, although the sounds of battle still drifted down into the sprawling city, he looked and saw nothing. Turning to the east, he saw that the line of dark clouds he saw that morning had expanded into a band of grey rising over the horizon. With the small radio he kept, he had heard nothing of a rainstorm in the area.

Dropping his hand, the boy sighed. "Looks like I'll have to use the phone. Shit. It's not like I know where he lives."

Continuing down the sidewalk, Shinji looked absently into the distance as he reached into his pocket for some change. His concentration, already worn from the long train ride he had endured to get here, was consumed so completely by his coinage quest that he wandered clear out into the abandoned street before he realized the sidewalk had changed color. Blinking, he looked down at the pavement, then to the sidewalk.

Before his brain could shift gears, a loud squealing noise suddenly erupted from behind him. Shinji nearly jumped out of his skin as he looked over his free shoulder to see what the noise was. A blue sports car was sliding towards him nearly sideways as the driver tried desperately to stop the car before it made parts of him a permanent addition to the paint job. Shinji shut his eyes at the last second, expecting to be road kill the next.

Nothing.

He peeked one eye open to see the car stopped mere inches from his legs. The driver side window rolled down, a mass of purple hair coming out. Wait, that wasn't just hair...

"Shinji? Shinji-kun, is that you?"

Shinji turned to face the driver of the sports car. The driver was a young woman, twenty-something, wearing sunglasses and sporting purple hair. The package also featured a wide smile, and a very large bosom, framed by a red dress that looked like the designer had run out of material while working on the top half.

After a tense second, Shinji found part of his voice. "Misato-san?" His heart rate, which had been pushed to its limit, was hardly able to fall back to something normal, what with Misato's cleavage in his clear view.

"Get in!" Misato shouted.

Shinji had meet Misato Katsuragi several times in the past. Being a military officer in charge of NERV security, she had come to visit him often, telling him what his father was up to and asking him what had been going on lately. In a way, they had grown to be friends. Some years ago she had changed jobs. She still worked within NERV, but was too busy to visit Shinji personally. She wrote the occasional letter, and when asked by his few friends, Shinji always told them they were from his mother. He was proud to have someone as intelligent and caring as Misato-san to call a friend, and in a way, she was like a foster mother, watching over him when his father refused to.

Shinji wasted no time in getting into the car from the passenger side, but as he did, he asked her if they were in a hurry.

"Yes, Shinji-kun, we are." She answered.

Shinji set his bag in the back seat, again willing his heart to slow down. Misato's dress must have come from the discount rack; it seemed to be missing an awful lot of material. She could never wear something that revealing in the military. He thought back; was she still an officer now?

"Buckle yourself in."

Shinji did so, then looked at her, forcing his eyes up to her head, even though she was staring firmly at the road. "Why?"

"It's bad. Really bad."

Shinji rubbed the bridge of his nose, adjusting his grip so that he wouldn't jab his own eyes out as the car took off. "Is this Ritsuko- san's fault?"

Misato didn't even pause at the question. The many disasters her long time friend had dragged her through had been tough, but this was something else entirely. Besides, it really wasn't her fault, this time. "No." She pointed out of her window, to the mountains in the distance. "See that?"

Shinji squinted, still seeing nothing. Then, a speck came over the top of the mountain. It was kind of hovering at first, then it seemed to drift to one side, slowly moving down. After a few seconds, it was lost in the tree cover, where a sudden ball of fire erupted. "Yeah..."

*Looks like a damn war to me.* Shinji thought to himself.

"That is an Angel."

"Angel?" Shinji blinked, trying to process the words. Wasn't an Angel a messenger of god? "Angel? Don't you mean some kind of monster?"

"Very much so, Shinji-kun. That's just what an Angel is."

"But an Angel isn't a monster. An Angel is more like an agent of mercy." Shinji argued. This just didn't make any sense. Why would an Angel be fighting with the JSDF?

"This isn't an Angel of mercy, Shinji." Misato responded, fingering a tiny silver cross that hung over her chest. "This... this is more like an Angel of death."

The remainder of the ride was spent in the company of their own thoughts.

------

Goku was lost.

Not much more could be said about the situation. He had walked into NERV with a clearly defined goal: Find Ritsuko and tell her about the Angel. Well, there wasn't much to tell, but he felt better offering his help in person. If he just waited outside for the thing to land, the military might come after him. And then he'd have to stop them...

Unfortunately, he had been lost since he set foot inside the underground complex. A passing group of men in camoflauge had been nice enough to give him directions to the underground train that took him to NERV HQ, but once he got off, he had no idea where to go. Most of the signs were in English, and even then they had more numbers than letters. Section 'L-46'? What did that mean?

At last, he had to do something. The Angel was much closer now, burning at the edge of his senses like a chunk of molten steel pressed into his flesh.

*That's it then. I'll have to figure out how to use this 'intercom' Ritsuko-san told me about.*

Goku stopped, having finally reached a major junction of two hallways. There were at least a dozen doors visible to him from where he stood, but he couldn't figure the meaning of any one of them. The small panel laid into the wall near the intersection looked promising. Walking up to it, he pushed the largest button on the panel, ignoring the numbered buttons grouped together like on a telephone.

"Ritsuko?"

He waited. The doorway behind him opened. Goku was about to call the doctor's name out again when a female voice yelled out behind him.

"Not now!"

Goku jumped a foot off the ground before spinning on his heels to find out who had yelled. He didn't even take the first step. "What?!"

Doctor Ritsuko Akagi grinned at him. "Gotcha!"

The doctor was a slim woman with blond hair and luminous blue eyes. A white lab coat that looked right out of an old science fiction movie cloaked her figure, which would otherwise be eyed very closely by much of NERV's male staff. Compared to Goku, she looked short, but actually stood a respectable five foot seven inches, which was now telescoped to around five-ten with her high heels on. The sleeves of her white coat were rolled up, her hands stuffed into the wide pockets on the sides.

Goku put a hand over his chest, pretending to be shocked. "You scared me!"

"Yep." The doctor responded, feeling assured of her superiority. "I'm still the Master." She look at him out of the corner of her eye as she closed the door to the lab she had just come out of. He had showed up in his blue and red fighting attire, which meant he was ready for battle. *Perhaps...*

Out loud, "Goku, can you come with me?"

"Sure. I have something important to tell you first."

The doctor stopped, giving the tall man her full attention. "Go ahead."

"The Angel. It's here; very close."

"I know. We're running out of time and Shinji isn't even here yet."

With that, Dr. Akagi sped down the hall. Goku, behind her, wondered aloud, "What's a 'Shinji'?"

------

There was little to be said about the room Shinji stood in, apart from the fact it was very, very dark.

"We lost power again." Came Ritsuko's voice through the blackness.

After a moment of standing still in fear of doing something morally unacceptable to Misato-san or Akagi-san, or potentially harmful to his persons, Shinji blinked. The lights didn't switch on and blind him suddenly, as he had expected them to. Instead, the lights came on one row at a time, each row of lights adding a little bit to the room's illumination as they switched on with an audible click.

"Son..."

Shinji knew that voice. He could identify it in his sleep.

"Father..."

He couldn't place the source of the voice, though. The room was empty, little more than a large box with a table and chairs set at one end. They reminded Shinji of props for a doll house, the great scale of the room dwarfing the furniture it contained.

"How are you doing, Shinji?"

The boy lifted one hand to shade his eyes as he looked up, then to the far wall. "I'm doing fine, father." He said, his voice carefully neutral. He lowered his gaze to the far wall, and swept it left and right, searching for the sound of his father' voice, the ends of his dark hair sweeping gently over his knuckles.

"The speaker's in the ceiling, son."

Shinji placed his hand at his side, it's mate slowly curling into a fist. Shinji tried to put steel into his tone, almost daring his father to show his face. "Why aren't you here, father?"

"I'm rather... occupied at the moment. Shinji, I have a task for you to perform."

"There is a monster attacking the city, father. What do you have in mind? Pilot of a jet fighter plane?" He laughed, his voice harsh and slowly beginning to fill with anger and scorn. "Or perhaps a giant robot, like the models you loved so much as a child."

"Nothing of the sort, son. I--"

"Then why don't you come to see me? What's with this charade?!"

"Now listen, boy."

"Don't _BOY_ me, father! What do you want?!" Shinji finally screamed, releasing a little tantrum in the enormous room.

"Shin-chan..." Misato chided gently. Shinji ignored her, ignored everything else in the room, his vision slowly obscured by a red haze. The veins on his forehead began to stand out in sharp relief, casting shadows the color of deep bruises across his skin, like a network of injuries from a severe beating.

"Son, the monster out there is an Angel. An enemy humanity has little chance of defeating without your help."

Shinji's teeth slowly began to grind, his jaw muscles adding more shadows to the lines of his face. Misato watched helplessly as his shoulders hunched over, his fists shaking by his sides.

"I thought... I thought you wanted to say hello."

"I called because I need you to be here."

"I thought you cared about me."

"I called because I have a use for you."

"I thought you _loved_ me! Don't you even care about your only son?!" Shinji exploded. He held up one hand, five fingers stiffly extended. His other came up and started counting his points off with so much force that it seemed he might accidently break several bones in his hand.

"Can't you even tell me straight? I get some stupid phone call out of the blue--" Shinji began, his voice rising.

Gendo's voice also rose in volume, the added power of the room's speakers giving it physical force as he countered his son's arguments. "I go through the trouble of getting you an escort here to be insulted?!"

"--pack my clothes, buy a train ticket, ride on that uncomfortable, worthless box of tin for--"

Ritsuko, unobserved by any of the people in the room, had taken out a pair of hand-puppets, carefully fashioned from a pair of gray socks, and was making them 'talk' at one another.

"--try to get backup, but nooooo. Then my worthless son shows up, wanting to--"

"--missiles flying, like some god damn _war_ has started at the edge of town--"

"--and I just want to ask for _one_ little favor,"

"--but that IDIOTIC, HEARTLESS--"

"--help to _fight_ an ANGEL!!!" Gendo roared, finishing his end of the father-son tirade.

The loosely held fist stopped inches from a suddenly slack hand, one finger of each extended but slightly bent. Color drained from Shinji's face, as he seemed to become but half of himself, shock pushing aside the force of his anger.

*_Fight_ an Angel? ME?*

Misato and Ritsuko blinked in unison, their ears filled with an intense ringing sound. Before them, Shinji stood, his only movement the involuntary act of breathing as he considered his options.

"The Angel is engaging the JSDF as we speak." Gendo continued, his voice slightly raspy.

"Angel?" Shinji said, barely above a whisper. "Fight it?"

"The 'monster' you saw the JSDF attacking." Gendo said by way of explanation.

Shinji's mouth worked for a few moments like a gun being dry fired. He finally opened his hands, looking at them, staring at them, memorizing every detail before he let them set motionless at his sides.

*Fight an Angel?*

He thought of the hover gunships and helicopters shot down and knocked aside with such ease it seemed to be a measured kind of carelessness on the Angel's part. He saw the beast destroying as it wont and expressing only a kind of tireless, childish glee.

*Fight that _thing_?*

"Well son, how is your karate?"

*He wants me to fight it?* The thought went through Shinji's mind over and over again, examining the words carefully, picking his way through them like a miner panning for gold.

"You want me to fight it?" Shinji asked at last.

His words hung in the air, a dried tree leaf dropping in an autumn breeze, pausing for the barest instant just before touching the ground.

"You can't!" Misato suddenly shouted.

Shinji didn't hear the interruption. His eyes remained focused on a fixed spot, an imaginary point on the far wall.

"Rit-chan, he--" Misato's voice died in her throat as she turned to Ritsuko for support. The blonde woman had two hand puppets, one at the end of each arm, looking at one another. Ritsuko was apparently turning her head to look at Misato as the Major called her name, and there she stopped, a slightly guilty look on her face.

Misato's mouth closed, an action requiring considerable concentration in her current state.

"Okaaay," She said slowly, looking back to Shinji.

"Father," The boy said, finally speaking. "Can you say it?"

The tension in the room was palpable. Shinji's mere presence was like standing near high voltage power lines to Misato. Whatever had set the poor boy off still had his heart in an iron grip, and he backed it with his voice, giving it an almost supernatural feel.

"Father..." His tone demanded an answer.

There was the sound of a sigh, the feel of a soldier dragging himself from the trenches one last time, to face the Hell of a battlefield he could no longer forget. It was the sound of a draw, a two-way defeat; no victory to be gained today.

"I love you, son."

"I love you too, father." He felt it like a dam breaking. His father wasn't totally heartless. It felt so good inside, knowing he was wanted and not just...

*Waitaminute.* Shinji frowned, ever so slightly. Then, in a firm voice, he finally gave his answer.

"I'll do it."

The speaker clicked off without a response. For perhaps another minute, the trio stood in the fluorescent solitude of the 'meeting' room, their eyes drawn to the empty table set a dozen meters away from them.

In this place, a decision had been made.

There would be no turning back now.

"I guess I'm ready. Let's go." Shinji said, picking up his bag and turning to face the two women.

Misato glanced in her friend's direction; the scientist had hidden her puppets... somehow. She turned her attention back to Shinji. "Yes," she said, "Let's go."

------

Shinji followed the blond doctor into what looked like an ordinary locker room. Nestled deep in the halls of his father's great work, Ritsuko had led him into a long rectangular room with a row of lockers on one side, a shower cordoned off at the far end, and a couple of benches in the open area. There was a floor-to-ceiling mirror near the showers. The only door to the room slid shut from above. Shinji had looked at as they entered; it was at least four inches thick and made of solid steel.

Ritsuko went up to a locker labeled '1.' The number seemed to stick leap out at him, challenging and faintly ominous. Inside the locker was a middle shelf, about waist high, and a couple of hangers near the top. A small package wrapped in clear plastic set on the shelf.

"This is your locker." Ritsuko began her lecture. "And this, obviously, is the locker room." She said, sweeping one arm around the room as she handed him the package.

Shinji looked at the plastic-clad bundle. A slash of dark purple over a luminous orange looked back at him. "What's this?"

"That's a tac-suit." She looked at him, keeping quiet. Shinji looked at the suit again, then looked at her expectantly. After a moment, she folded her arms. "Well?"

Shinji held the package at arms length. "What does it do?"

"It monitors your vital signs, tracks your position, provides communication facilities, and a few other useful things."

"Why put all this stuff in a suit?" Shinji asked, slowly pulling at the wrapping.

"Well, there are radios topside, along with a few weapons, but there was no sense in weighing you down with useless equipment."

"Like a gun, right?" Shinji dead-panned.

Ritsuko poked a finger in the air and shouted, "Right!"

"Well, can I have one?"

The doctor paused abruptly, looking at him like he'd just crawled out from under a rock. "You? I don't think so. Now" Ritsuko took a deep breath. "GET IN THAT SUIT!!!"

Shinji shook his head, a motion honed by habit, letting his hair fall back into place. He ripped the package open and looked at the 'suit' inside of it. *Skintight Spandex. I figured the doctor'd go for something like this. And the color, GAAH!*

"Something wrong, Shinji-kun?" Ritsuko said, popping up behind the boy while he hesitated. "Just slip into it and you'll be fine, trust me." Her voice took on a slight purr and Shinji had to fight to keep his blood pressure from rising.

His self-control straining, the boy broke free of the doctor, removing an arm that had almost made it to the waistband of his pants with some difficulty. "Look, Ritsuko-san, I'm not going to wear the damn suit. It's... it's..." He stuttered. "Not... going to work, er... very well."

"Well, fine." The doctor hummfp'd. "Then get your ass out there and start fighting."

"What?!"

It was then that Gendo's smooth voice came into the room, sounding distant and boxy over the intercom's speakers. "Doctor, is my idiot son ready to go yet?"

"Hey!"

Shinji could almost hear his father form a proper apology in his mind before speaking in that agonizingly calm voice. "Son, I did not realize you were there."

*No shit.* Shinji thought to himself. *That old bastard. I oughtta...*

"He's not going to wear the suit."

"I didn't hear you, Akagi-san."

"It's not going to fit, sir." Ritsuko answered, winking at Shinji.

There was a moment of silence from the other end. "Yes. I see. Well, the Angel is coming quite near the city. _Now_ would be the most appropriate time, doctor."

"Hai, hai." Ritsuko said absently, grabbing Shinji by the arm. "Let's move, small stuff."

The walk to their next stop was but another short jaunt compared to Shinji's hike through the city earlier. The second room was colored much the same as the first; drab grey, like a military base. However, this room was very small, with just enough space for the doctor and himself to fit comfortably. Well, maybe comfortable for the doctor, who didn't seem to mind brushing herself up against Shinji as she adjusted various arcane controls in the tiny space. Shinji, making an effort at being modest, kept his eyes glued to the floor. He noticed that is seemed to split down the middle. Glancing up, he saw the roof had a matching line to it.

*Now what's that for?* Shinji asked himself.

"Enjoying the view?" Ritsuko asked, paused in her work.

Shinji blinked, realizing that his head was practically resting between the doctor's breasts, with him look up between them, past the side of her head, while he gazed at the ceiling. Blushing, he tried to shuffle back a bit, only to run into the wall directly behind him.

The doctor laughed disarmingly. "Don't worry about it. Just don't let the Major catch you slacking in your duties."

"I wasn't... I didn't..." Shinji tried to defend himself.

"Whatever. Listen closely." She wrapped a piece of stiff cloth around his wrist. "This is a communicator, it'll keep you in touch with our command center--allow you to communicate with us, if you will. That being the function of a piece of communications equipment, and--"

"I get the point, doctor." Shinji interrupted. He did remember the doctor being absent-minded the one time he met her. When was that? Five years ago? But, he did not remember the... playful side of her. Best just to let her get it out of her system.

"All right, Mr. Smarty-pants. You don't have to push any buttons, either. Just talk and we'll hear you."

"Who is 'we'?" Shinji questioned.

Ritsuko began counting on her fingers. "The Commander, the Major, myself, the command staff, which consist of Maya, Sheigeru--"

"I thought my father ran this place." Shinji interrupted.

"Who do you think is the Commander?" Ritsuko countered.

Shinji made a little 'oh' sound, his face showing his surprise. Ritsuko punched the little green button by the door, which opened obediently for her. Shinji made a mental note; that button was the 'out' button.

"Will I be okay out there?" He asked.

The doctor looked serious, stopped in the doorway. She turned to him, meeting his eyes. "You know some martial arts, right? You'll have to defend yourself."

"Ritsuko-san," Shinji said thinly. "That thing was blowing up helicopters and dodging missiles when Misato-san and I got here. Do you seriously expect me to fight that thing in hand-to-hand combat?"

Ritsuko leaned towards him, bringing her face within inches of his. "Yes."

Shinji felt his face growing hot, the doctor's breath moving across his face sensuously. "How long do you think I'll last?"

"Five nano-seconds." She replied, matter-of-factly.

Shinji's voice temporarily abandoned him. "And I'm... and I'm supposed to beat it?" He squeaked out.

Ritsuko smiled. "Of course, dummy." She kissed him on the cheek, winking again. "For motivation."

"Wait, how about some body armor!" The door was already closed in his face. He noticed the green button change to a glowing orange, then to red before he dared to push it.

Nothing happened.

"Umm... Ritsuko-san? Hello? Anybody? HEY!"

"You wanted to wear your street clothes, Shinji-kun." Ritsuko's voice said from the other side of the door. "Suit yourself. Get it? 'Suit' yourself? BUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

*I'm going to die at the hands of a madwoman.* Shinji thought to himself as the entire room was bathed in red light. The door started _sliding_ towards him, taking the rest of the wall with it. In a matter of seconds, he was down the far half of the room. He noticed the line on the floor had been covered by the mobile wall before him. His heart leapt into his throat as the entire space started to shake violently.

"H-hey! This isn't funny!!!"

The room, quite clearly an elevator, suddenly shot upwards, nearly forcing the boy to his knees. Shinji screamed and his life flashed before his eyes, centering briefly on the doctor who had put him here, and then on his worthless father, who seemed to enjoy a personal hobby of making his only son's life a living Hell.

His last plea, a prayer, before reaching the surface, was that he might visit the proper vengeance upon his father before he died.

After this, of course. It was time to kick some serious ass.

- TbC


	2. Reckoning

"SHUT UP!!!" - Shinji Ikari

------

Neon Genesis:Immortals

Episode 0:2

------

Reckoning

Disclaimer: Characters contained herein are not property of the author. This work is non-profit. All rights reserved by Squaresoft, Viz Video, Gainix, ADVision, and all other respective copyright holders of Final Fantasy VII, DragonBallZ, and Neon Genesis:Evangelion.

------

[June 20th, 2015.]

Shinji stumbled out of the small elevator Ritsuko had shoved him into mere seconds ago, blinking furtively. His bearings lost, he glanced around, eyes adjusting slowly to the light which filtered through the dark clouds painted across the evening sky. A single question hung at the back of his mind like the final secret of a hundred-level video game maze: Where was he?

*Tokyo-3 is still here.* He mused, a forest of stone buildings stretching into the distance before him like the columns of a long forgotten temple. Even as he stepped off the platform and into the open, he could see most of the buildings shrinking, retracting into the ground and leaving the remainder of the city a barren concrete wasteland. A look skyward revealed the gathering of hateful clouds--a thick layer of dirty gauze poised to strike like the marching army of an ancient god-- the meaning behind their existence painfully clear.

The boy paused there for a moment, bringing his vision down to the wide concrete street laid before him. The street lights had already turned on, unnecessary just yet, but called upon nonetheless. The air had turned harshly cold, tainted by ozone and wetted by unseen rain drops. The chilling wind that was slowly building felt supernatural--an evil force making its way into the city. For a moment, he crossed his arms and rubbed them rapidly, hugging himself to ward off the cold. The wind tugged at his hair like a dozen impatient toddlers, pulling the short locks low over his forehead. *I'm not ready to do this!* His mind screamed. The situation felt wrong; the inevitable confrontation was tainted, empty; it felt hollow in a way that the boy could not describe.

At that exact instant, he felt a presence beside him. It was subtle as a spring breeze, and warm enough to stop the coldness working its way under his skin. Shinji turned to face the newcomer, trying to figure out just who could affect his senses that way by mere proximity. His gaze revealed a tall man with long locks of raven hair that sprang up from his head, easily defying gravity's will. He held himself in a loose ready stance, relaxed and observant. He wore a set of hand-made clothing; specifically, a bright red sleeve-less gi with a black T-shirt underneath the top. The gi was well cut, fitting the man like a second skin. A pair of deep blue wrist bands and black boots rounded out the costume. To Shinji, it seemed there was something important about the clothes, something he was missing with a casual glance. Part of it came from way he wore them; the clothing set upon his powerful frame like a ward of invincibility.

He didn't move or say a word for several minutes, his coal black eyes trained on the distant horizon as Shinji's had been moments ago. He ignored they young man at his side completely, waiting.

The wind blew through the arrival's hair, drawing the black strands out to dance carefree in the cold breeze. Shinji's tongue found a way around the dryness in his mouth after a moment, and poised itself to ask a question.

"Who are you?" He said. Everything felt like a dream, the unreal closeness of the wind combined with the distant sounds of nature, even though they stood in the center of Japan's largest city.

The arrival answered immediately, as if he had been waiting for this question. "Goku Son. Who are you?"

*Goku Son... that name sounds familiar.* Thought the boy. "Uh... I'm Shinji. Shinji Ikari."

Goku scratched his chin, looking at the boy as if sizing him up for a fight. "Hmm... Shinji? Wait, do you know Dr. Akagi?"

"Yes." Said Shinji, looking up at the fighter. Then, it hit him. *The Kamehame-ha wave. The Tenkaichi Budokai. The alien fighters. Goku Son! It's him!*

Shinji may have lived a sheltered life for most of his fifteen years, but he was trained by a martial artist to become a martial artist. Studying the history of martial arts and the people that were beacons along that particular path to enlightenment was a minimum requirement for a serious student like him.

Moreover, any fighter worth salt knew about the Tenkaichi Budokai. The world famous meeting of skill and entertainment in the twentieth century, it was proving ground to dozens of esoteric martial arts styles. Shinji knew well of the tournament, but it had been canceled forever shortly before he was born.

Standing beside him was the champion who quite possibly saved the entire planet from a vicious demon during the final tournament. A legend among legends at the age of eighteen. And there was something else....

"Hello? Shinji? Are you okay?"

Shinji blinked at the question, and realized he'd been staring into space, his introspection getting the better of him. "I'm, uh... okay. It's just a-a-amazing to see you here."

The fighter relaxed his posture, the worried look vanishing from his face as quickly a spring rainstorm. He let his arms rest loosely at his sides. "Are you okay?"

"I don't believe it." Shinji whispered, barely breathing. "The winner of the Tenkaichi Budokai."

"Yes, that would be me." Goku nodded, still watching the youth carefully. The boy had a very shocked, and somewhat reverent expression on his face. Several seconds passed, and the boy didn't so much move. "What?" Goku finally asked.

"What ARE you doing out here?!" Shinji shouted, sparked into motion by the question.

Goku blinked. "Fighting the Angel, of course. Aren't you?"

Shinji shrugged, then looked at the small ring of cloth fit about his wrist. Ritsuko said it was a communicator, and that it was on all the time. Did that mean his father could hear this conversation? *Well, who cares if he can hear me. Jerk.* Shinji thought to himself before answering Goku's question. "Well... yeah."

The tall man smiled, looking in the direction of their approaching enemy. Though his face was mirthful, his attitude was nervous, yet certain. It was a tired kind of nervousness, of knowing what was to come and still fearing it, and it did not seem to bother the fighter at all. If anything, the expression on his face showed he welcomed the building tension, the charged, tangy quality of the air. "The doctor." He said suddenly. "She told me about you."

"Fight..." Shinji was not doing as well as his new comrade. His breathing had nearly halted. The fear was with now, as it was with Goku. To the boy, however, this fear was new and overwhelming. Like a drowning man cast into a storm, he could not tell up from down. Everything sounded and looked alien. Nothing was familiar anymore.

It had all begun with the long ride by train into Tokyo-3. He hadn't slept on the train, though he had been tired during the whole trip. The stress of speaking with his father again, this time almost in person, had worn severely on his nerves. Merely knowing that another Angel was coming for them--coming right for this city--was enough to make him want to run screaming into the foothills.

And yet, the lone country boy, the lost little kid, the new arrival in the big bad city; _he_ was supposed to stand alone against a destructive force that the entire world's military just barely stopped.

It was madness.

"My... my father said he wanted me to fight. He meant it literally. But this... This is beyond what I had imagined." Shinji said haltingly.

"It always is, Shinji." Goku said sympathetically.

"I guess they weren't kidding." The boy said under his breath.

"Kidding?"

"It's a long story." Shinji answered, directing his vision to the ground.

Goku adjusted his wristbands absently. Shinji watched his every movement carefully. It didn't look like a nervous habit and Goku didn't seem the type to engage in such senseless activities to let his mind rest. Every movement of his fingers was carefully coordinated down to the tinniest detail. He almost seemed to be balancing the weight of the fabric across his skin.

Shinji wondered what kind of man would willingly throw himself in harm's way like this. Well, he had... but that felt different. Shinji was doing this to... to...

"Say, Shinji, I'm having a hard time feeling your power level... are you sure you're up to this?"

Shinji looked his unexpected companion in the eye. "I've been wondering that myself." He said quietly. "But I don't think I'll have much say in the matter."

"What makes you say that?"

"You do know what an Angel is capable of, right Goku?"

The fighter shrugged, answering honestly. "Somewhat."

"S-s-s-somewhat?!" Shinji said, actually staggering back. *He just said `somewhat' to that question?!!*

The fighter sighed tiredly, then smirked. He raised one arm and pointed into the distance with a weathered finger. "Maybe I don't, Shinji, but the time for talking is over."

Shinji looked, a felt a gasp fall from his lips. He had never quite believed in monsters. Not real ones anyway. He had been born into interesting times, and today few things were beyond the reach of science. One such thing was the Angels. Another, Shinji had considered, was why his father was running a United Nations Special Agency like NERV all by himself. His father was, at best, a simple fact-finder; at worst a simple thug. And yet, he had told Shinji to fight the Angels. Shinji had been told, repeatedly, that his father, Gendo Ikari, was the all-knowing supreme commander of NERV.

It didn't make any sense.

*Can I really win? Can I succeed were even the military failed?* Shinji looked to his new partner, Goku, who gazed into the distance intently, eyeing the foe they had chosen to face that day. *Even with the man once named the Strongest Fighter on Earth? Does my father really have that much faith in me, after all he's done? Does he really think I can beat this thing?*

Evidence suggested that the answer was a resounding `YES,' and now, the merits of Gendo Ikari's plans were to be given the ultimate test.

While Shinji gazed in the direction of Goku's pointing finger, the thunder of distant cannons slowly silenced, descending into the dead calm of a coming storm. Shinji's heart tightened in his chest as he saw a speck of darkness on the horizon. A single object was headed directly for them, at a very high rate of speed. From this distance, the dust cloud billowing out behind it was easy to see, the object itself cloaked in concealing shadows. A split-second later, the sound of a powerful explosion reached them.

Goku took up a fighting stance, his fingers curled like a tiger preparing to pounce. Shinji followed suit, taking up his familiar ju-jitsu stance. *It's show time.*

Shinji felt himself nod in the affirmative, amazed that he could still move. The Angel. That was the Angel! He could feel it, a pin prick of fear on the back of your neck when you know someone is trying to sneak up behind you. His eyes narrowed, his muscles tightened, and everything else seemed to fade into the background, like troubled waters washing down the drain. After a few seconds, even the fear was gone.

Goku spoke to Shinji in hushed, almost reverent tones. "Have you done anything like this before?"

"Like what?" Shinji said, keeping his own voice low. The silence since the military action had deepened, seeming to surround them, press in on them.

Goku answered. "Have you ever... you know, fought in a battle like this before?"

"You mean, as in fight something like an Angel? No, never."

"But you've fought before. Fought people,"

Shinji took a deep breath, the last of his fear crystallizing. "Yes."

"Then you know what to do."

The Angel was almost in visible range, coming right at them. Shinji locked it with his gaze, and when he spoke, his voice had an edge of steel behind it. "Yes."

----------

At about three hundred meters, the Angel took on a color to match its ominous aura; a blood-red speck in the distance. Shinji's fists tightened as he prepared himself for what was to come, at a moment when he had no time left.

At one hundred meters, the Angel resolved itself into a shape that was roughly humanoid, but it was mysteriously surrounded a red aura that flickered like the fires lit in the deepest bowels of Hell. Shinji's hind-brain began to scream, clawing through his calm fighting instincts and pumping raw terror through his veins.

At fifty meters, Shinji swore he could see that it had eyes. Dead, pale pink eyes. It did indeed look human, an emaciated body with long arms and legs, skin a pale blue, and talons almost a half meter long where a human being would have grown fingers.

The boy stood rooted in place, while the Saiyajin warrior tightened his lips into a slight but distinct snarl, ready to attack.

At ten meters, the screaming stopped. All Shinji could hear was his own heart beating. His brown, human eyes fixed on the Angel's pink, alien ones, and everything came to end for Shinji.

His father ceased to matter.

The world ceased to matter.

Color, light, the very sense of being drained away.

His mind was the last thing to go, blown away completely, as a handful of dust dropped into a hurricane.

Then, only darkness.

------

Gendo Ikari was not a vain man. To see him following the basic principles of personal hygiene was a requirement for a man of his position, but beyond being presentable at all hours of the day, he was still very much an absent-minded. His hair was between emergency trimmings--not quite long enough to be a problem, but plenty long enough to get noticed. A shave was a rare thing; Gendo had grown a short beard to avoid that regular hassle. All that was left to his attention was a shower.

One was posted on his daily schedule.

Contrary to his appearance, Gendo was a one-of-a-kind commander. As the head of NERV, he had all the administrative responsibility of a bureaucrat and the leadership responsibility of a General in the JSSDF. What would have been the worst of both worlds to an ordinary person, however, looked as easy as pie to Ikari. Gendo alone seemed to know all that was happening in NERV, moment to moment, and when his attention was needed, it was given directly and wholly to the problem for only as long as necessary. His confidence and poise were two things which never failed him. His calm face among panicked subordinates was like the eye of a hurricane. He turned chaos into order as if by magic.

Except right now, that is.

Gendo was leaning over Ritsuko's shoulder, his face tense with lines of worry, his collar unbuttoned and nervous sweat flowing freely down his neck. The doctor, working at a speed that brought to mind the mayhem of villagers running from an erupting volcano but without the sense of order and purpose that the villagers might have showed, was bent nearly double under the Commander and had already elbowed him in the ribs-- twice--in an attempt to get him to give her some breathing room.

"Ikari-san, could you PLEASE leave me room to work here?"

"Doctor," he said, his normally deep voice escalated into a pleading tone. "How much longer is this going to take?"

Ritsuko finally stopped working the keyboard in front of her, popped her knuckles, and prepared to give Commander Ikari a piece of her mind. She liked that Shinji kid. Nice (as he could be, considering the circumstances), always very understanding, and very responsible for a boy of his age. She had no children of her own, but it wasn't hard to see why the commander was so agitated. It was his only son out there, but somewhere Ritsuko had to draw the line.

"Commander. I am aware you have jurisdiction over administrative work, and oversee field operations, but when the damn computers break, it's MY department. I know you're concerned about your son--we all are--but be reasonable, please, and give me enough room to BREATHE, and I'll see about getting the cameras back on line."

Gendo actually took a step back, surprised at Ritsuko's sharp tongue, but obeyed her directions nonetheless. "I'm sorry for disturbing you, Doctor, I was merely concerned for my son's safety. Is there anything you can do to get this darned contraption to work?"

Even Misato, wearing her `official' jacket complete with rank bars, cracked a smile. Despite NERV's heavy reliance on technology, the Commander had a hard time swallowing these glitches. To him, everything had to work properly, the first time. Given the circumstances, NERV was an exceptional organization. A government entity that made do with its limited budget and weight in political circles, managing to perform the double-duty of a intelligence agency and a military force without stepping too far from the middle of the road. Japan did not appreciate having to build a substantial military like its allies had done, but Ikari had persuaded the nay-sayers as if it were a personal crusade. His ability to get whatever NERV needed, when NERV needed it, was legendary.

It was, to say the least, unusual to see him so worked up over his son's safety. Still, it was understandable, given the circumstances. Any parent would worry about sending their only child into what appeared to be certain death. No, that was wrong. Any parent who did that would have to be committed.

Yet, this was a risk the Commander was willing to take. A very big risk. NERV had done all it could. It was now time to see if all of its work would bear fruit.

------

On the field of battle, things had not been going well. Thousands of meters below, protected by two dozen layers of titanium armor, the core of NERV waited, holding its collective breath. No news came from the surface other than the muted sounds of small explosions. Below the surface, no one could say for sure what was happening far above. No sound came to them. No picture. A single report had come in from an observation post ten kilometers out of the city, saying that it looked like a full-scale ground war was being waged right in the center of town.

With that, NERV had received its first accurate description of the battle.

Shinji slumped to the ground, fighting to stay conscious. The impact with what was left of a small apartment complex had left the back of his head suddenly feeling in worse shape than the bits of charred concrete that lay on the ground about him. In the distance, he could hear the sounds battle as Goku fought the Angel to a stand still with fireballs that he threw from his hands. And that wasn't all. Goku, of all people, could fly!

It was unfortunate that the Angel could do so as well, but that particular beast seemed to prefer the ground.

Shinji muttered a prayer under his breath as he slowly tried to get to his feet. His body hurt too much to coordinate his actions consciously, but his severely bruised brain was apparently receiving its messages, and he was finally able to stand tall. Too exhausted by that activity, he paused for a minute to make an attempt at breathing. The pain in his chest was getting worse, and when he exhaled it felt like someone was rubbing sharp sticks together in his rib cage. That probably meant a couple of broken bones.

His vision clearing, the boy looked up to see the two fighters tangling in a mass of blurring limbs, heading directly at him. He took another deep breath, wincing, and braced himself for the coming attacks. It wasn't likely he would survive much longer, and he resigned himself to the inevitable with a grimace.

The two fighters were only a dozen meters away when Shinji felt... something. It was something familiar; something he should have immediately recognized, but didn't quite fit. It was like a warm, motherly hand tugging at his soul. He turned around, his back to the approaching fight, trying to pinpoint where this feeling was coming from... and why he was privy to such an unusual phenomenon. Later he would say that it was like the very act of life; breathing, working lungs, and a beating heart, but _outside_ of his own body. He looked, and after a moment, he saw. Just a few feet away, under a small pile of rubble leaning against the foundation wall. The roar of wind and the crack of fist on flesh rushed to catch up with him as he kneeled.

His hand reached out, and time began to slow. Goku was screaming something incoherent to him. He could feel the electric aura of the martial artist, and the dark, chilling aura of the Angel pressing closer. *But there's something there.* His hand alighted on the rock, and he swallowed hard, letting the hot saliva burn down his throat. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and started marching.

"SHINJI!" Goku was shouting. It sounded like it was right in his ear.

He still felt it, that warm feeling, close to heart. It was covered with a bit of fear though, the lump in his throat like an apple coated in a layer of dust. What _was_ that feeling?

Shinji told himself it was nothing, told himself it wasn't important, and pulled his hand back, preparing to strike. Fear crawled across his body like an army of spiders, nearly drowning out the pain of being thrown into a building. He was ready to turn and face the Angel, ready to give all that he had left.

Then he froze.

"SHINJI!"

The Angel's breath on the back of his neck. The continuous heavy clank of shattered concrete and torn steel grating on his nerves. His own voice, screaming inside his head. *This can't be!!!*

"SHINJI!"

A hand with tiny fingers peeked out at Shinji from under the rubble of the destroyed apartment complex. A hand, in the center of a tiny pool of blood. A tiny, child's hand. Shinji's vision clouded over and his own hands, scarred hands, hands carved into tools made to protect people, closed into fists.

"And the wicked sent their armies to do battle with the Angel."

*That's not Goku's voice.*

"But the Angel's great power, backed by the power of God, stopped the armies in their tracks."

*Angels don't speak. Angels aren't people and only people can speak. Angel's can't speak! They CAN'T!*

Shinji faced his enemy, the wind drawing itself slowly around his feet, circling him and rising into the sky.

The Angel continued to speak, Goku laying on the ground behind it, clutching his stomach in pain. "The wicked then sent their children--"

"SHUT UP!!!" Shinji cocked a fist back and let it fly at the Angel's grotesque face. The Angel grabbed his hand and--

------

"Wait! On the monitors!" Ritsuko pointed to a pair of screens at her right elbow. Traces of wild lines scrolled across the screens slowly. One had Shinji's name at the bottom, the other was marked with Goku's.

On Shinji's screen, the red line went flat.

For a moment, the gathered NERV officers felt that their hearts had done the same thing.

------

[June 21st, 2015.]

The small hospital room had a single bed. The patient, one Shinji Ikari, lay on the bed staring into space. He was dazed, trying to recall just how he had ended up here.

There were memories of the fight; short lived flashes of violence whose recollection alone made him break into a cold sweat. He remembered his arriving in Tokyo-3, and meeting his father. He talked to Ritsuko... and then... he was fighting.

*Fighting? I shouldn't have been fighting anything.*

The boy blinked several times, then slowly moved his head to take in his surroundings. While parts of the room came into view, he did not pay attention to what rested before him, his eyes remaining blank and glassy.

The curtains hung over the room's lone window were drawn. Needlessly, as the sun had dipped low in the sky and only a few beams of amber light made it to the foot of his bed, thin lines of light and darkness splayed across the sheet. To his left, a stack of bizarre machines stood silent, watching over him like the stoic ranks of some futuristic robot army. The rest of the room was painted in an antiseptic white that would be blinding in the full light of day. A small flat-screen TV, a dresser- like piece of furniture on the opposite wall, and a single hard plastic chair were all that made up the room's meager furnishings.

"... I am..." His voice echoed quietly in the room. He licked his lips and tried again. "I'm alive."

*I feel okay...*

The boy sat up slowly, afraid his body might come apart at any second. His head felt like it was wrapped in cotton and his eyes seemed to throb with the pulse his heart. His mouth tasted like a dead insect and his hospital... `clothing,' if it could be called that, was still damp with his sweat. Sweat most likely born from unremembered dreams.

He was most definitely alive.

Drained from rising to his current position, Shinji slumped in the bed, barely holding himself up with his arms. He noticed his hair hanging in front of his face. *It's growing a bit too long for brawling.*

He almost smirked, the corners of his mouth twitched, but then suddenly died.

*For fighting.*

He looked around the room again, slices of his current residence obscured by dirty strands of black.

*Fighting...*

In the darkness behind the half-drawn blinds, with the light creeping through, his face turned slack, his attention focused inward.

*For fighting.*

*My hair is too long for fighting?*

Laboriously, he brought one hand to his bangs, and stroked them out of his vision, only to watch them sway back in place.

*Why was I fighting in the first place?*

Even as he asked the question, the answer burned in his mind. Words slipped from his mouth, generating barely a murmur. "Was all that just a dream?"

His hand climbed higher, his vision locking on to the object. His own hand, calloused from years of training, yet still young and still not as strong as a truly experienced fighter, held in his view.

"It... it couldn't have been."

The stare continued until he dropped his hand to the bed. With a painful grimace, he drew his spine back to a straight line. After a pause, the grimace came back and stuck on his face while he rotated his arm at the elbow, then at the shoulder. When he stopped, tears had formed in his eyes.

*What happened? What _happened_? I'm alive but far from unharmed...*

In his mind's eye, a vision came, the face of a man, screaming. His hands were held in front of him, a flickering light growing in his palms. Then a blur of--

Shinji shook himself, gasping. *Breathe. Remember to breathe.*

He lay back in the bed, his eyes now wide, yet still staring sight- lessly into the air, a look upon his face of a man who has marched through Hell, but still insists he's home and everything's okay.

The look stayed there until he passed out an hour later.

------

[June 20th, 2015.]

It was time to present a report to the Budget Committee.

The commander was a man of truly remarkable ability; to learn that he was afraid of a committee would be quite funny to some people. Said people, however, wouldn't find it funny at all if they had to deliver this report. And humor would evaporate from the subject entirely should they learn what this Committee was really planning.

Ikari detested the red tape and the meaningless maze of rules the Committee imposed on him and his agency, NERV. It was especially trying to keep a straight face when he had to lie to the Committee for one little thing or another. The lies piled up, little ones here and little ones there to cover the first lie, like dust caught in a spider web. After a while, maintaining the lies became a task unto its own. Now _that_ would be a funny thing to write into his schedule.

It was a necessary evil, to seek and keep funding for NERV's existence on an almost weekly basis. The advanced research that NERV personnel performed on a regular basis required a staggering amount of money. Money which no government was willing to simply give up. It had fallen to NERV's boss of bosses, Gendo Ikari, to keep the boat afloat.

To this end, he allied himself with an organization known as SEELE, which was as demanding and impersonal as combat itself.

The final thorn in his side was the sinister setup, the dark walls, and knowledge that this room technically didn't exist, except as a slick computer graphic. The meeting room that this Committee insisted upon was a holographic anchor linked to a network of super-computers. The signals traveling from hidden location to hidden location not only allowed the group to converse in near real- time without revealing much of their actual location, but also added a small measure of additional security. No one on earth could listen in on this conversation, barring those in attendance.

"I trust the reports are up to your usual standards of accuracy?" Asked a voice from the darkness.

*Why is it always so damn dark in here?* Ikari thought, fiddling with his palm computer. "Everything has been completed within the established guidelines." he said, voice barely level. *It's not like I can just re-write these things to suit my own interests when five thousand people saw that fight.*

"Good work, Ikari. You make us proud." The voice again. Low, dangerous, and reminding Gendo of a caged animal--held back, but only for the moment.

Gendo's slim and sterile smile remained frozen on his face as he mulled over his odds of surviving this session without bowing to another unreasonable demand from the committee. They were a crafty bunch, and fond of toying with him, subtly insulting his every action, and annoying him to no end. Then, they usually snuck in a `request' for him to do something. Something, usually, that he would never even contemplate until they suggested it.

It was a challenge indeed to fight this evil.

Gendo retorted to the voice's question. "NERV cannot afford gross errors in an endeavor such as this."

Another voice responded quickly, from the far end of the meeting room. "Our opinion exactly, Ikari. Your future work will be up to these standards, yes?"

"Of course." *Even if it means sacrificing my young to an Elder God, you bastards.* "Our technical staff is among the finest in Japan..."

A third voice from the darkness. "We aren't concerned with the technical staff, Ikari, we meant your son."

*Oops.* Thought Gendo, quickly retracting his previous promise.

"The destruction he and that other fighter caused during their battle with the Angel was quite... significant."

Gendo fought to keep from sweating. He had this one in the bag, but SEELE wasn't here to toss around money without results. They had made that abundantly clear long ago. "But far less than the cost of ammunition and lives the JSSDF wasted against it." *There, that will do them in.*

"True." Answered the chairman. Point for NERV. "You came through in a time of crisis Ikari, with flying colors and a dry collar." Barely visible, the chairman smiled. A jackal's grin rubbing against Ikari's soul. "That will be all."

The holographic projectors clicked off.

A momentary sigh of relief echoed in the empty room. "Fucking bastards."

The normally sealed door to Ikari's long-distance meeting room opened, revealing the slim form an older man in a NERV uniform.

"What do you think? Did it go as well as you hoped?"

"I survived." Ikari thought for a moment. "I feel something is wrong, however."

Fuyutsuki nodded, mostly to himself. The lines in his face seemed to fade away, leaving with his worry. "As do I, old friend. How about we cut the afternoon short?"

*An afternoon off?* Gendo usually spent the afternoons following one of these meetings putting back a fair amount of sake at a mid-town bar. One dirty secret Fuyutsuki and him shared. "Thanks for the offer, but I'm afraid I can't. Ritsuko wanted me to see something. Something important."

Fuyutsuki chuckled. "She's not going to try and seduce you again, is she?"

Ikari made a face as he turned off his computer and stepped out of the room. Fuyutsuki move aside, still egging on Gendo. "Want to take a gas mask with you? Maybe some body armor?"

"I think I can survive an afternoon around the doctor." Gendo retorted, closing the holographic meeting room. He led Fuyutsuki down a short hallway whose walls, ceiling, and floor were all a dull brown color with a pattern of perfect squares forming a continuous, enclosing grid of black lines. It fit, somehow, the way SEELE seemed to shadow his every moment, box him in.

"Hehe... Well, have a good time. I'll order an extra round of Sake in your honor."

The pair finally reached Gendo's office, the last door before the elevator. Fuyutsuki took his leave immediately with a small bow. Gendo, already splayed out in his very large and very expensive desk chair, just threw off a wave to his friend.

A single button on the desk killed the lights, leaving Gendo in the darkness with his thoughts.

*I just wish I knew _why_ I have this odd and terrible sense of foreboding...*

------

[June 22nd, 2015.]

Shinji found it odd that Misato Katsuragi had an office. He had always assumed the military woman operated completely from the top of her head and ate any piece of written communication she received like some secret agent from the old twentieth century movies.

The Commander of Field Operations did, in fact, have an office, and it was no less demeaning than the standard Tokyo-3 sariman's office. It was ironic and quite humanizing to see that even Misato had to turn sideways to slip between her own desk and office's smallest file cabinet before she could properly seat herself and aim a stern stare at the young boy she had come to talk to.

Shinji, recovered from his stay at the local hospital, was rapidly shoving his belonging into the large canvas bag which he had brought with him to Tokyo-3. He was surprised to find that he hospital he was in doubled as an infirmary for NERV personnel. He wondered if it was something his father did, as an administrator for this facility, or if that was a task he left to an underling.

*Yes, an underling.* Shinji decided.

"Shinji?"

The boy ignored her. He concentrated to jamming his toothbrush into the bag's smallest pouch sideways, bending the plastic tool slightly to make it fit.

Misato took to her feet. "Shinji!"

"Yes?" He did not look up.

"Will you stop that for a minute and look at me?"

He did as requested, bangs swinging into place over his eyes, which looked at Misato coldly. The woman straightened her spine as taught through years of military service, refusing to be intimidated by the diminutive fighter before her. "Look at it this way, Shinji-kun."

"Look at it what way, Misato-san?"

"I was just about to explain tha--"

He went back to packing his travel bag at dangerous speeds. Misato refused to sigh, to relent in the slightest, holding in her frustration for the moment. She edged out from behind her desk and began pacing the spot of gray floor tile that lay between her charge and the room's only door.

"I know you're feeling quite rattled from all that's happened lately. I know it's only been a few days since you got here, but there's no reason to leave right now."

"No reason my ass, I--"

Misato stopped her tracks and spun on the boy, her voice booming into his face at point-blank range. "WHAT did you just say?!"

The young man actually gulped before answering. "Gomen. Look, Misato- san, I understand NERV has some problems here, but let's be realistic. I'm not any good to you. I'd just be in the way. My father was too busy to even come and see me in the hospital." He paused, his voice beginning to waver. "A-and I think it would be better if I just left."

She had to hold herself back from giving the poor boy a hug. "Wait. Shinji... I... We, the rest of NERV, need you."

His eyes, shrink-wrapped in tears, looked away from her and swept through the bare office. It was kept with the same military precision he remembered from those years long past, when he visited NERV for the first time, to see his father. Why the cold order laid before him was comforting was a mystery.

He chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds, holding back the tears and waiting for his thoughts to become more a marching band than a raging storm.

When he spoke, the words were almost drowned out by their own echo. "I know."

His fingers slid loose of the bag's straps and his arm dropped back to his side. His head hung low as he waited for judgment. He didn't feel right to leave. Angry at his father, yes. Willing to turn his back on an entire city, no.

And there was something else that was bugging him. Something else wrong with his memory... or was it merely the world?

"Shinji-kun. If we didn't have to involve you in this war, believe me, we wouldn't. I don't want you here just to fight. Kids shouldn't have to fight in wars. It's not a child's job to engage in life and death battles on a regular schedule. But Shinji-kun, that's exactly the situation we're in right now; we don't have a choice." The boy swallowed hard, his body shaking ever so slightly, holding back the tears. Misato continued, her face tight with worry, her voice low and grave. "There's just you and Rei, who isn't here yet. And Asuka... hell, she's still in Germany. If another Angel were to attack..."

He broke his silence, a whisper like silk across a tanto. "You'd suit me up and send me out there again, even if I thought I couldn't handle it."

Misato nodded, even though Shinji could not see her, and did not turn to see the movement.

"Would you... would...." He stopped, shaking his head, then continued, his voice drawing out the words in a desperate rasp. "Would you just... would you sacrifice my life to stop the Angels?"

*The moment of truth.* Thought Misato, crossing her arms. Shinji turned to face her, his eyes dry, and now hardened; more dangerous.

She nodded.

"I understand." The answer had to come from her, directly. He knew it already, in a kind of distant way, as if he'd just browsed through his life story in a newspaper article. This made it real, accepted.

Accepting the truth did not put him at ease.

One life for the sake of a hundred thousand, or one million. It wasn't right, but just... just was.

It just was.

His mind slid back to the previous day.

[The previous day.]

White walls. White ceiling. White door. White lights. White-out. A crimson glow was revealed to his eyes when he closed them. This only made the white burnt into his retinas react in all kinds of weird ways that reminded him of a recent chemistry experiment gone awry. The kaleidescope of color and splotches of light that jumped around his field of vision like a gang of wild monkeys did nothing to improve his mood, and this only happened when he tried to wipe the dirty feeling from his face.

He hadn't been able to sleep a wink in hours. After a few bouts of fitful sleep filled with terrifying, ill-defined dreams, his exhausted body had finally recovered enough energy to stay awake. He had not eaten anything, but the mere thought of food was still repulsive to him.

The pain and weakness in his limbs was all but gone. He had measured time recently by the position of the sun, as he had never thought to ask for a clock. Now the sun was long gone and the only light in the room came from the single fluorescent panel in the ceiling.

*I wonder if Heaven is lit up like this. A perverse torture chamber for God to watch his creations squirm.*

His thoughts lingered like a half-asked question, the answers already waiting on the tip of his tongue. It was tempting to simplify his situation like that, just assign good and evil by giving them names; paint the world black and white to ease his mind. Nothing was ever that simple, nothing. He had lived and learned that for years.

The door opened and Shinji heard hesitant footsteps as someone entered the room. The visitor's presence preceded him like the scent of cinnamon and the taste of hot tea on a cold winter day. It was the second time Shinji had felt such a presence, and he did not need to look up to know that Goku was standing in front of the door, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The fighter was dressed casually now, the leather shoes and pressed slacks out of place on his powerful frame.

Shinji had a flashback to every cheesy detective movie he'd ever seen. *Isn't this where Goku comes bearing bad news?*

"Ah, hello." he said.

Shinji nodded at the greeting. "Hello. It's nice to see you're still alive." That came out harsher than he had intended.

Goku only winced slightly, then quickly sat in the room's only chair. Shinji struggled into a sitting position, his muscles protesting every movement. Finally, he managed to look Goku in the eye. "I'm feeling better."

The fighter's own gaze shifted away quickly. "Glad to hear it."

The silence stretched out, unbearable, until Shinji could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing. He couldn't think of anything to say.

Goku spoke for him. "Do you remember what happened?"

"I remember." Shinji said, telling his half-truth. He looked down. While he could remember most of the fight, parts were blanked-out, cut from his mind. His most vague memory was of him attacking the Angel head- on. Surely he would never do something so foolish, so insane.

Goku watched him carefully, then stood, walking up to the windows and looking outside before he spoke. "And how are you doing?"

Shinji turned to face Goku at the sudden question. He stopped short of answering, suddenly wondering himself how well he was. He felt well enough to walk, perhaps get out of bed and around the room to stretch his legs, but he was still a little sore. His head was clear, except for his poor recollection of the last X amount of time. *Everything seems alright.*

"I'm okay." he finally said.

"Good." said Goku curtly.

"Is there something wrong?" Asked Shinji.

Goku turned to face the boy. He folded and unfolded his hands in front of him, then scratched the back of his head.

"Well?" Shinji persisted.

Goku took a deep breath. "I want to know if you're up to this. I know your father didn't give you much choice in the matter, but I think it's important you decide to do this yourself." He paused, uncomfortable, glancing at Shinji several times before looking steadily at the ground.

Shinji's jaw slowly tightened. "What are you keeping from me?"

"Do you know what you're involved in?" Goku asked.

"I will if you tell me!" Shinji shouted, then shook his head. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell."

"You looked upset while we were fighting the Angel." Goku's voice was distant. "Where you saw... where you saw..." He turned back to gaze out the window. Shinji could have been mistaken, but for a second it looked like the big warrior was about to cry.

Then he remembered.

The hand.

His eyes widened and his throat seemed to shut itself. His breathing came to a halt. One moment he felt sick, the next he felt he was going to faint.

The hand.

Finally, the words came where his feelings left off. "Why? Why did we have to do it?!"

"No one else could, Shinji. No one else can fight Angels." Goku said, still not facing the boy.

"But we didn't have to kill anybody!" He shouted at Goku's back.

The fighter whirled to face him. "We didn't!"

Shinji remained silent.

"That Angel killed someone! If you hadn't stopped it there's no telling how many people it would have killed. These things don't have morals!"

The door opened, whisper quiet. A tall man strode into the room, adorned in black clothing and wearing a strange set of armor. His clothes had not a mark or stain on them, unnaturally perfect in color. They made him look like a figure that was cut out of one time, one place, and pasted into this world, like a drawing of a person pasted into a real photograph. He had one leather glove on this right hand that featured a metal collar around his wrist. His armor was made of a pair of spherical shoulder guards held in place with a single steel chain. The flat grey metal that made them seemed utterly unable to reflect light, though the surface looked as smooth as the surface of a mirror.

The man himself was not particularly extraordinary, apart from being very tall. His face was calm and serene, and his gaze spoke of knowledge worlds beyond normal people. His hair was silver, like that of an old man, though his face was youthful. His emerald eyes were cold and dangerously intelligent.

"He's right, Shinji. It is now Us or Them." He spoke in an ordinary, rather flat tone of voice.

Goku looked at the man. "Hey! Who are you?!"

"Yeah, who are you?" Shinji joined in.

"I am Sephiroth." the man said.

"Oh." said Goku. It seemed simple to him, although his eyes kept looking at the man's armor.

"And how did you get here..." Shinji added.

"I wish to help you defeat the Angels."

There was a moment of silence as Goku and Shinji looked at one another. The hospital door opened, stopping once it had moved far enough for Ritsuko to poke her head inside.

"Yep!" The doctor said in a loud, saccharine voice. "Meet the newest member of your team! He's been dead for many millennia, but he has a lot of combat experience!" She then opened the door fully, stepped inside and did a little cheer with two small fans.

"Indeed." Sephiroth said dryly, watching the display with a detached, emotionless gaze.

"What was that all about?" Shinji asked, confused as the other two men.

"Tension breaker, had to done." Ritsuko answered. She left the room before fielding any more questions.

Goku smiled ever-so-slightly, then put a hand on Shinji's shoulder. The boy looked up at him. "Look, Shinji... not every battle is a fight of Good verses Evil. Usually it doesn't even have anything to do with `right' and `wrong'."

"Correct." Sephiroth added. "In fact, it usually just comes down to `Us against Them,' which is where we are now."

"Fighting a war I don't understand, in a situation I don't want to be in..." Shinji mumbled to himself. *Too late to back out now.*

Goku looked at the large warrior, his eyes holding a measure of respect for the tall man. Shinji also looked at the arrival, his face curious. "Who are you again?"

[The present.]

"I'll stay." Shinji answered.

Misato's response was quick, but honest. It was not the canned happiness Shinji had feared. "Your father will be pleased."

Still, it wasn't great news.

Misato began walking out of the office. Shinji took the hint and didn't try to follow her. He didn't bother to give a retort to her last comment. "Commander Ikari is at least a fair man, Shinji."

He turned his nose up in her direction once she turned the corner, and zipped his bag closed. Staring at the sack filled with his life's belongings, he suddenly felt very small and alone. Living here, in a city where he was a stranger, with no-one to call a friend, was not an enviable prospect.

Sighing, he pulled his bag off the office chair and took the seat.

It looked like he would be here for a while.

------

[June 20th, 2015.]

Deep within the metal and concrete base that was NERV, thousands upon thousands of meters underground, lay a network of high-security storage rooms. Accessible only through a nearly endless number of mind-numbingly dull corridors, the low levels of NERV was not the kind of place one would want to get lost in.

Deep within the twisting metal corridors of this base, protected from all eavesdropping, NERV kept its darkest secrets. All of the hallways were well-lit and exceedingly clean, which only served to magnify the intense sterility of them, creating an almost hostile environment for any unprepared visitor.

Visitors were few indeed; as one of the highest security areas in all of NERV, only a handful of people even knew of its existence. Extra work crews, when needed, were escorted under armed guard and didn't see anything they were not supposed to. None of the doors were even labeled. Anyone entering this area alone had to know exactly what they were doing.

Within this maze, amidst the hundreds of random dead ends, Gendo Ikari stood observing a most unusual structure. It was a wall, but as the reflection from his tinted prescription glasses showed, it was a wall with a huge hole. The room before him had been designed to hold pretty much anything. It was surrounded by walls made of an insanely tough titanium alloy. Each wall was more than two meters thick. Given the melting point of the metal, and the ceramic case that surrounded the room, nothing short of perhaps a nuclear weapon should have been melt through that wall. And yet, the rest of the facility was quite intact. No scorch marks marred the ceiling or floor near the wall. It was as if the room was built with this most unusual egress when the facility was constructed.

"This is the place he broke out of?" Gendo asked.

Standing at the Commander's elbow, Ritsuko answered his question. "Yes. It happened during the fighting, caught on tape. No one was injured. We barely picked up anything on the base's sensors."

"What was detected?" Gendo asked formally.

"A magnetic field, the type of which is often formed when melting metal. No alarms were sounded, of course." Ritsuko didn't even look at the clipboard held at her side as she spoke. She was quite surprised to see the anomaly and had set the area cameras to record everything. Discovering the hole had been quite a shock.

"And he was recaptured?" Gendo asked.

"He turned himself in once on the surface. He said that something `didn't feel right.' He wants to talk with me right now."

"I'll go with you." It was not an order, but it wasn't a request either. The commander had Said So, which meant he would Be There.

"He wants to fight the Angels." Ritsuko said after a moment of silence.

Gendo didn't move or acknowledge her comment at first, looking at the destruction before him, contemplating the ease with which it was wielded. "I know."

Ritsuko tucked the clipboard under one arm, pumping her free hand in the air while gleefully shouting. "Okay! So, since we're done with all the mysterious, evil stuff, let's go to the arcade!"

Gendo played statue. "Act your age, doctor."

"You didn't like that, Gen-chan?" Ritsuko asked, leaning around the man's shoulder so she could look him in the eye while somewhat draped over him.

This time the commander turned to fully face her, something like a smirk curling his lip as he corrected her. "Don't call me Gen-chan."

------

[June 22nd, 2015.]

Misato Katsuragi lived in a modest seventh floor apartment within NERV's authorized housing district. She paid the rent, but NERV had arranged for the place; making sure she lived close to base. The apartment was not terribly small, but from where Shinji stood in the open entrance, it looked positively tiny... especially with the huge piles of trash and unopened moving boxes hogging most of the floor space.

*Thank God I don't have much in the way of personal belongings.* Shinji thought to himself. *It looks like there's barely enough room for me in there. Misato said she had another roommate...*

"Okaerinasai!" Misato said cheerfully. She waited through the nervous pause. After a moment she stopped waving. After another moment of silence, she almost frowned. "Well, come on in, Shinji. You live here now."

Shinji's feet were rooted in just outside of Misato's front door. Behind him stretched the concrete walkway to the elevator. The skyline of Tokyo-3 was only a few steps away, and the boy looked to it as if seeking his answers there. After an eternity, he discovered only that, if nothing else, Misato had a nice view of the city from way up here on the seventh floor.

"I know..." he said.

"Don't be such a grump. We're gonna have ourselves a party tonight!"

*A party.* Shinji thought.

Two women exited an apartment a few doors down the walk. Shinji twitched slightly at the sound of the automatic door sliding shut.

"Hey, don't feel so..." Misato started, her voice dropping off as she heard the contents her her neighbors' conversation. The two women were on their way to the elevator, talking far too loudly for normal conversation, their voices carried clearly to the officer and the boy.

"Can you believe that battle they had in town today?"

Shinji froze.

"I know, this is getting crazy. If something like that were to happen before we evacuated..."

The boy couldn't tear his attention from the conversation. Misato clenched her hand into a fist until her fingers turned white, her mouth drawn into an angry line.

"I know! My husband says he's ready to move away tomorrow, and I don't blame him. I wouldn't want to be in a city that's in the middle of a war!"

The elevator doors closed. Silence once again overtook the building.

Shinji remained silent, wiping a single tear from the corner of his eye. He looked at the tear, as if that single pearly ball of salt water held all of his answers. Then, his face hardened, the tear flung away with the flick of his finger. He stepped inside.

"Ta... Tadaima."

Misato reached past the boy and pushed a button near the door; it slid shut with a quite "whoosh." Shinji didn't come in further into the apartment, remaining in the entry area with his bag still on his shoulder.

Misato finally broke the impasse of his mind with a burst of speech. "Hey! Shinji! Are you coming in, our should I dig up a couple of blankets?!"

"It's okay, I'm coming in." He answered meekly, walking into the apartment. Misato threw her folder of papers on the couch and pointed down the hall without a word. Shinji mumbled under his breath. "We're always at war. Throughout history, it's the one constant. It may be the only thing mankind is really good at. But wars have been fought through cities many times over. Just because they've never been in the middle of one...."

The boy stopped before a veritable mountain of beer cans. It was true that trash seemed to lurk in every corner of the apartment, but this was definitely the empty beer can depository.

Shinji took the time to comment on the fixture. "What's this? Mt. Yebusi?"

Misato looked at the pile from inside the kitchen. "It's getting there. Put the groceries here, okay? I'm going to change." She said, pointing at the counter. Shinji noticed there was already a can of beer in her hand.

"Sure."

"Your room's first on the right." She shouted from the short hallway.

Shinji found a bare spot on the living room floor that wasn't right in the way, and set his bag down. The groceries that the two had stopped to buy on the way home went to the kitchen. He sat the bags on the counter first, unsure of whether he should just dig into the work or wait for Misato to return. After a moment of indecision, he shrugged and began putting the food away.

Some of the supplies he would have to leave out--Misato had made it clear they would be eating some of... this stuff for dinner. All she bought was fast food. After a minute of looking, it seemed to Shinji that all she stocked in her kitchen was fast food. This made an odd kind of sense to the boy. Even better, it made quick work of putting everything in its proper place, leaving Shinji time to look over the apartment one more time.

Apart from the huge supply of beer Misato seemed to consume, the place was relatively normal. The western style couch was a nice touch, set along one wall perpendicular to the balcony. The kitchen was a tiny collection of cabinets wedged into the corner opposite the living room couch, an the eating area was right in between the two, part kitchen, parting living room. Most of the living room was actually consumed by the moving boxes and various pieces of litter that Misato hadn't thrown out yet.

After his examination, Misato still had not come back yet. She was only down the hall... where Shinji did not want to go. Instead, he opened the refrigerator, on a quest for something to drink. A lone milk carton at the back grabbed his attention, he reached for it and immediately wished he hadn't.

"Kami..."

The milk carton did not contain milk as advertised. Instead he found a small handgun was taped to the inside of the carton.

He quickly put the `milk' back and went for a glass of water instead, hands shaking. His fingers shook getting the glass, but he managed to fill it without incident. Standing alone in the kitchen, he felt a deathly silence creep over the place. Misato had not made any noise and only the fluorescent lights buzzing above were left to keep him company.

His mind wandered back to the gun inside the refrigerator. It kind of made sense, after a moment. Misato used to be in the JSDF; she still held a rank of Captain, and she had once mentioned that her and one of Ritsuko's assistants had been to Basic together.

Why did the sight of a weapon agitate him so? His mouth had dried, his heart racing... his heart had been racing before, granted, but what was it?

He sat the empty glass down on next to the tiny kitchen sink. He took in its metal curves, looking at them without paying attention to the details. Idly, he noticed a tiny shard of clear broken glass casting a fan of light and shadow. The counter was spotless, save this single piece of broken glass right in front of him, about the size of his thumb-print.

After a another moment of the unbearable quiet, he was pushing the shard around the counter idly. His mind was still lost, processing events, reliving feelings, and going over everything that had happened after his arrival. How many days ago was that?

Misato. His father's voice. The fight.

His finger stopped moving over the counter, catching the sliver of glass between his skin and the Formica top.

He remembered it.

A red and black blur of motion followed by the very air itself snapping--not unlike watching a piece of living lightning.

Fists and feet striking ineffectually against some kind of energy barrier...

The earth-shattering crack of Goku being thrown into him.

Shinji's entire arm jerked, flinging the shard of glass across Misato's kitchen. The movement brought him out of his revere, sharpening his focus on the present. His finger; his finger hurt. He looked at the bleeding digit, and another image hit him.

A collage of powerful, blinding lights. The sharp snapping of bones breaking under his own skin--

"AAH!" Shinji looked at his hand again, a trail of crimson winding down his arm. *Did I just say that out loud?*--Snap! Snap! Snap! It echoed in his mind like a dry gunshot--*Was I just yelling?*

His attention returned to his wound. A flick of the wrist opened the faucet for him, and the blood was quickly washed away with a cold stream of water. The motions were all too familiar.

His arm emitted another snapping noise, twisted behind his back, far beyond a reasonable angle, broken in no less than five separate places. The pain was enough to nearly draw him into unconsciousness.

"AHH!!!" Shinji gasped. He was holding his own arm at the wrist tightly. Everything was in its proper place. A tiny speck of blood was perched on the tip of his finger, a red wink at him. He wiped the blood away, the phantom pain of a broken limb fading from his mind, though he felt strongly that he was forgetting something important.

He looked at the tiny cut on his finger. *What is it?*

The wound was closing.

Not closing in the sense that his skin was back to a normal position and the bleeding had slowed, but in the sense that the cut itself was _healing_ right before his eyes. Healing hundreds of times faster than these things normally did, far faster than any human could. In a few short breaths, it was done. The cut gone, the thin smear of his blood across his fingers remaining.

A building rushing at him, through him, collapsing around him. Unearthly screams of those were unlucky enough to merely be there when the structure came down upon them.

Shinji shook his head more forcefully, and stumbled, dizziness claiming his sense for a second. His footing faltered at that instant and he fell to the floor, landing on his bottom, still staring at his hand. His eyes saw one thing, but his mind seemed focused on another, as the words for it slipped from his lips.

"Oh kami..."

The fight. Fighting the Angel.

Goku was asking him a question. "Have you ever... you know, fought in a battle like this before?"

NO! He wanted to scream, but his voice was not his. The response his body gave was unintelligible. Not so much a collection of words representing thoughts, but more a loose train of feelings given to some on-the-spot interpretation.

The explosive assault of the invincible monster. With hands like a bundle of sharp scissors and skin like a sheet of armor, it felt as if he were fighting a living tank. Nothing humane stood before him, crushing him, tearing at his body like a demented toddler fiddling with a new toy. Whatever it--this Angel--it was friend to no one. Shinji could feel the hatred on its breath a dozen feet away, intensifying as it came closer.

A few inches from his face, it smelled like he was drowning in Hell.

"Leave him alone!!!"

The yell almost cut through the overpowering presence of the Angel. Almost. Goku didn't wait for a response. He charged the beast, striking it with his shoulder and smoothly running through an arsenal of powerful attacks. The Angel let go of Shinji, moving away from him faster than the eye could follow. Goku was everywhere at once, a blur of destruction. He would strike, and as Shinji looked, he seemed to catch a hint of the Angel at the extreme edge of his peripheral vision. Even as he looked, any blow that Goku mis-landed was like a meteorite slamming into the earth. Concrete a meter thick vaporized at his touch. Steel ran like his molasses around his finger. Power lines torn asunder like wisps of cigarette smoke.

And the terrible glowing power Goku's very body emanated, like a living, breathing sun.

The Angel was right there in front of him. Just there, inches away, where but an eye-blink earlier there had been nothing. It looked at him blankly, the pink eyeballs like two pieces of candy wedged into a grotesque decoration. It _stared_ at him... no, more like it was looking _into_ him, _through_ him.

"You are judged." It said.

Shinji didn't see its lips move. He didn't really hear a voice, he just felt the words, unlike any he had heard in his life. The Angel didn't speak again, it just kept looking at him.

"Shinji, get out of the way!"

How much time had passed? Goku's hands were glowing brightly, building his famous energy attack--something Shinji had once thought to be a myth, some black magic cooked up by the martial arts master simply for show. The heat he was generating, even at this distance, instantly convinced Shinji otherwise.

He looked right and bolted left as fast as he could move. The Angel caught him by the arm, simply snatching his limb out of the air as easily as frog catches a fly.

And then it squeezed.

Shinji felt like his eyes were bugging out and that the veins on his forehead were ready to pop. None of this, however, concerned him as much as the feeling of his entire arm being bent and twisted like a length of warm taffy. His lips couldn't even move. His brain, overpowered with the sensation of pain in volumes he had never experienced, was nearly short- circuiting just to keep him conscious. He wanted to scream; he wanted the pain to end. He was prepared to grant any wish to any being if only it would _stop_, but he was frozen... hopelessly frozen by it... powerless to do anything.

His heart stopped. Fed the poison of this demon the world had named an Angel, enduring pain beyond belief, everything just stopped.

And everything else ceased to matter.

Goku, closing on the Angel with his hair on fire, his body wreathed in flames. *Since when did Goku catch on fire?* Shinji asked himself. He was quickly relieved to find the pressure on his arm gone, along with the pain.

*That was nice of him... but I can't feel it very well. I can't seem to feel anything very well at all...*

And the ground rushed up to meet him.

"Shinji! ... SHINJI!"

"Yes?" To Shinji's surprise, his mouth worked. Fluorescent lights illuminated his surroundings silently. He heard the compressor to a refrigerator operating somewhere nearby, and felt a pair of strong hands gripping his shoulders. His vision lingered for a moment on the ceiling, another ceiling he had never seen before. "M-Misato?"

The woman loomed above him, dressed in a sweatshirt five sizes too big, holding him up off the floor. She was kneeling next to him. With a glance, he noticed she was also wearing a pair of shorts that barely qualified as "decent."

Shinji blinked, taking in the situation. They stayed still like that, frozen in place for several interminable seconds, before Misato scooped him up in a crushing hug that felt real--and refreshing.

Then he started screaming.

As Misato held the young boy, feeling his nails dig into her shoulders, she looked up, her eyes automatically seeking the seam where the kitchen wall met the ceiling. She had often lay semi-conscious in this very room, hiding from the darkness outside after a heavy round of drinking.

Captain Katsuragi, decorated officer of the JSSDF, expert tactician, had seen almost all the horrors war had to offer in her short life. She had seen entire squads of brave men cut down by a hail of machine gun fire. She had witnessed limbs detached from bodies by argon lasers, and seen first-hand the results of a carelessly thrown hand grenade. There was a time when she thought she had seen it all, but thinking that never helped. It _never_ helped. Every time she went back into combat, to rescue some hostages, to secure an area for government operations, to do anything, she had to face the same nightmares she saw every night with her waking vision.

Not long ago, she had witnessed a boy and an unarmed martial artist take on one of the deadliest creatures mankind had ever encountered by themselves.

She could not escape the feeling that something fundamental had been broken. Something in this world that was so important, it's loss might mean their very lives.

------

[June 21st, 2015.]

Ritsuko's office was not, by normal hours, a dark dungeon, but as the doctor had long ago resigned herself to ridiculous hours that her post demanded, her office had been customized slightly. To the outside world, it was only three in the afternoon. Ritsuko had been up for 33 hours straight, right through the most stressful day of her life, and the `lazy' portion of her brain was begging for sleep. Her office lights were turned down to help ease the throbbing in her head and the stinging in her eyes. She would probably spend the night in here again. Trying to walk home after the sun went down seemed like a trek barefoot to the Himalayas and back. To hell with sleeping in her own bed; any sleep at all would be bliss.

Yet one task remained, one which the doctor could no longer put off. A girl was standing in the middle of her office, a young girl with roughly cut short hair, wearing street clothes. Ritsuko leaned back in her chair, the hard back cutting into her skin and keeping her just on this side of dream land. The doctor had left her desk lamp on full blast, leaving the unit to cast a beam of blinding white light into the face of her visitor. The girl was probably squinting; to Ritsuko, her face was a big white blur.

"Welcome back." The doctor said coldly.

"Akagi-sempai... why are the lights off?"

Ritsuko sighed. "I'm _trying_ to be dramatic."

"But--" The visitor began.

Ritsuko sharply drew in her breath before exploding. "AND YOU'RE RUINING IT!!!"

"Yes ma'am!" The figure barked.

Ritsuko tapped the desk lamp's on/off switch, leaving her guest to blink in the sudden darkness. The girl was about fifteen years old, wearing blue jeans and a white blouse. She had short, dark hair that shone an amazingly deep shade of blue under the office's lighting. Ritsuko knew it would be an impressively bright blue in natural light--not that she was up to testing that theory now.

"Yes ma'am, WHAT?" Ritsuko shouted, getting to her feet.

"Sempai?" The inquired.

Ritsuko's voice turned saccharine. "Please, Rei-chan, call me Ritsuko."

Rei answered her with a tired shake of the head, her eyes still spotty from the "interrogation light" that Ritsuko had blinded her with. "Hai, Ritsuko-san."

"Well?" The doctor persisted.

Rei lifted a hand to shield her face. "Well what, I'm here aren't I?"

The doctor angled the desk lamp down properly and touched a button on the desk's surface. The lighting returned to a more normal level. Though still dim compared to outside conditions the office and its occupants were now clearly visible.

Her scene set, Ritsuko laced her fingers together and placed her elbows on the top of her desk, though she was almost short of room for the feat. "Yes..." She said slowly, her voice somewhat muffled by her own hands, held in front of her mouth as though concealing a national secret.

The new arrival, Rei Ayanami, gave the doctor an exasperated look. She'd done this before, and it was no more amusing this time than it was the first dozen.

- TbC


End file.
